Response to the Consultation Paper on Lowering the Voting Age to 16

This document contains Together Gibraltar’s submission to the government’s consultation paper on lowering the voting age in Gibraltar to sixteen. The contents of this document have been signed off by the party’s executive body. The discussion is based on conversations between this team, responses to a survey shared on social media, and conversations held with parents, comprehensive school teachers and teenagers.

Executive Summary

Our thoughts and findings are broadly in favour of the proposed change to the voting age. This decision is based on the potential benefits to young people and Gibraltar’s democracy more broadly. We have considered the positive case for voting age reform and believe that this change would serve as an effective way of improving civic participation among young people (not just sixteen and seventeen-year-olds).

We have examined the case against voting age reform and believe that none of the concerns raised are sufficient to outweigh the benefits. Based on academic findings and Gibraltar’s unique context, we believe that getting young people involved in voting earlier would increase the average political maturity of Gibraltar’s voting population.

We have highlighted the reforms, primarily in education, which we believe should go alongside this reform to maximise the benefits: giving young people the chance to make an informed decision and start their journey towards political maturity. These reforms will also mitigate the potential harm: ensuring that young people are not voting based on misconceptions or manipulation.

Finally, we have examined the reasons behind opposition to this reform along with political alienation and polarisation more broadly. We have provided suggestions for how this reform can be introduced in a way that ensures citizens feel included and communicates that this change is being done for the right reasons.

The Consultation Process

Our assessment of the topic of the voting age in Gibraltar begins with an assessment of the consultation itself. As a reference, we refer to the UK government’s ‘Consultation Principles’ published online (Cabinet Office, 2018). We believe that this voting age consultation has not lived up to core aspects of these principles and as such has failed to do justice to the topic. While the Gibraltar Government is of course under no obligation to follow these principles, we do believe that they represent a set of principles by which consultations can be compared and we believe that this particular consultation has fallen short in three key areas:

“Timeframes for consultation should be proportionate and realistic to allow stakeholders sufficient time to provide a considered response and where the consultation spans all or part of a holiday period” - We believe that this principle has not been adhered to as the consultation was a very important topic but ran for under six weeks, with a substantial portion taken up by Christmas and Hanukkah.

Being clear about the areas of policy on which views are sought will increase the usefulness of responses - Although the consultation is for a very specific, well-defined issue, we believe that consultees were not given sufficient context to consider the ramifications and impact of lowering the voting age. As such our engagement with our members and the general public was conducted via a survey with specific questions. These questions are available in the appendix section of this document.

Through our public consultation, we have noticed a few common themes that seem to be dominating the conversation. We have attempted to condense these issues below and offered academic advice alongside our anecdotal observations.

The concern surrounding lower “Political-Maturity.”

The major concern noted within this discussion is the notion that 16-year-olds have “lower” political-maturity; we phrase that in parenthesis to challenge a preconceived notion that age directly correlates with intelligence. To frame this argument, we must first understand what political maturity means, and the implications this has on voting. Within academic circles, political-maturity is not a matter of physiological or emotional development, rather it is a question of whether an individual has a set of qualities or tools that are useful when interacting with politics (Bergh, 2013; Chan & Clayton, 2006; Doldor, 2017)). Within most legal systems, this is defined via age, however, the law’s approach to it has been to consider the concept of maturity and political-maturity on an issue-specific basis. The result is a construction of maturity that is anything but consistent.

Nevertheless, this view was expressed in our survey, with our respondents stating that they do not consider “most of our youth [as] politically mature enough yet” with one stating that “[their] son would vote something weird just to take the piss.” Despite the evident parental concern, it is imperative as policymakers that we ask ourselves why we think these things, or why teens might have a “lower” political-maturity in the first place. Are age differences in political interest and knowledge the result of developmental capacity, or is it that 16- and 17-year-olds have been traditionally excluded from politics and as such do not have an interest in the area?

Informed by evidence, we believe it is the latter. Possible differences in political maturity are likely the result of our current sociopolitical system and the civic experiences available to youth (Horiuchi et al., 2023; Meirick & Wackman, 2004). Of course, we understand the concern expressed by the wider public about this change to the voting age and also agree that it must be supplemented by an educational enfranchisement to have an effect. As evidenced by Meirick & Wackman (2004), classrooms that allow youth to cast “mock votes'' have teens with higher civic knowledge and intentions to vote in the future, and research on Austrian youth versus youth in the United Kingdom shows that lowering the voting age to 16 alongside adequate promotion within schools increased youth political interest (Bergh, 2013; Zeglovits & Zandonella, 2013). These findings indicate that by lowering the voting age to 16, we may increase political maturity over time.

Another issue regarding political maturity, and as indicated via our response, is concerns regarding the “noise” that youth might introduce into our political system, or rather “[taking] the piss” to phrase it more colloquially. If the youth vote is based on lower levels of political knowledge and attitude, will 16-year-olds vote in an uninformed manner, or one that does not represent their belief system and instead that of their parents? Currently, there is very little empirical evidence for this concern, and there is greater evidence that 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds possess similar “political maturity” as young adults and are less likely to be informed by their parents voting if they are informed correctly (Hart & Atkins, 2011; Wagner, Johann, & Kritzinger, 2012; Dahlgaard, 2018).

Consequently, we believe that with 16-year-olds voting, we should equally enfranchise them via educational methods, and this leads us to our next area of discussion.

Education is the way!

The survey’s findings prominently highlighted a crucial theme: the imperative requirement for inclusion in addressing awareness of the “political decisions” which impact the youth demographic. There is a clear understanding among respondents that political decisions will heavily be impacted by a youth vote. As such, to mitigate any possible “issue,” education emerges as a crucial means by which to impart political awareness. Both we and a substantial portion of our respondents stress the imperative for educational adaptations to align with this change.

At the age of 18, which is the current voting age, you often find yourself at a transitionary stage where you might feel disconnected from one central location (Zeglovits, E., & Aichholzer, J, 2014). In Gibraltar, young people have often started at university, began working, and moved away from home. The institutions crucial to our political socialisation and maturity become more strained. However, 16-year-olds are still subjected to compulsory education to attend school, where knowledge surrounding politics through mandatory subjects like PSHE is more prominent. Suppose there is a political tool system via education to better equip our youth to make politically informed decisions. In that case, lowering the voting-age is not something we should be fearful of, but rather, something we should be embracing to make a significant improvement in our political lives.

Research suggests that young people who are not educated in these civic areas believe in democracy but feel alienated from politics (Ballard et al., 2019). As a result, they feel dissonance from political parties and politicians. As a short-term consequence, this disconnect leads to voter apathy, with young people not participating in elections (de Lange, 2023; Ballard et al., 2019). Longer-term, this can lead to political radicalisation and political extremism (Ibid.,).

By involving the Gibraltarian youth in politics at this age, they are more likely to feel engaged in the political process at a time when they are developing their democratic norms and by doing so bolstering their political self-confidence (Dahlgaard, 2018; Hart & Atkins, 2011; Hart et al., 2007; Zeglovits, E., & Zandonella, M., 2013). Since they are in school, it is possible to reach them via education, making them more likely to engage within the political sphere (Ibid). Anecdotally, this appeared within the 2021 abortion referendum whereby 16-18-year-old voters were more likely to vote than 20-30-year-old voters, perhaps a reflection that 16-18-year-olds are more engaged with the political goings on in Gibraltar than their older cohort.

This also tackles a further concern of our respondents, which is the influence of parents on what their children will be voting for. Naturally, there was a worry that parents would influence the voting behaviour of their children. This is not inherently an age-based issue. Anyone, regardless of age, can be influenced in their voting behaviours by their family members. However, as De Lange (2023) notes the factors influencing younger people may be different from those of older voters. Younger voters are becoming more politically mature in an era of polarisation and social-cultural differences, resulting in other issues likely influencing their voting behaviour (Ibid). Interestingly, parents are just as influenced in their beliefs and voting preferences by their children as children are by their parents (ibid).

The consultation paper has also raised the topic of manipulation potentially impacting young voters. While our findings do indicate that young people are increasingly likely to have social media as their primary source of news (Pew Research Centre, 2023), we find that this trend is skewing to older demographics over time. This implies that more adults are getting their news via these sources and/or that young people are not ‘ageing out’ of this trend. As a result, we believe that addressing the impact of social media (along with misinformation generally) is becoming a more pertinent issue for our democracy. For this reason, we believe that civic education should introduce the topic of media literacy and the concept of political misinformation at an age when it is still possible to reach citizens before they have left formal education.

Finally, especially concerning Gibraltar, is how as such a small state, our core curriculum will not be as focused on our issues, politics and history as it is in larger nations. We believe that this gap creates a further divide between the young and the old in terms of political maturity beyond what is normal in most other countries. This view was also brought up by 20% of our survey’s respondents without prompting. As such, we believe that a form of civics education is even more important to create a sense of engagement in and understanding of local politics in the youth ((Horiuchi et al., 2023; Zeglovits, E., & Zandonella, M. 2013).

Yet, this involvement brings another heavily prominent theme, and one that requires more scrutiny and nuance when considering it, the concern that this promotion of the youth vote is based on underhanded party politics rather than a wish to understand the youth of Gibraltar.

The concern surrounding this as a means of “party politics”.

A recurrent topic in responses to our survey results was a concern around “party politics,” and the notion that this vote was being rushed through to secure more votes for the current administration. Whilst we understand this concern, due to the nature of Gibraltarian politics, and politics as a whole – populist ideologies run rampant.

As a party, we believe in the good nature of the Government and are hopeful that this proposal is in no way meant to capitalise not done on any one party’s popularity with the younger demographic, the size of the largest party in the alliance’s youth wing, and with the outsized role that governing parties will play in young people’s lives (via school, sports/culture, youth events, etc). We believe that this was a long time coming, and as a party, Together Gibraltar welcomes this proposal which falls in line with our ideals of politics being for everyone – not just the politically mature.

Where we do grow concerned, and appears as a recurrent topic in our survey and conversations, is with the rushed nature of this consultation and the lack of publicity from the Government. As noted previously, there is also a lack of structure or suggested structure by the Government. Identifying this gap we prepared our survey in line with the Consultation Principles published by the UK Government (Cabinet Office, 2018) But this survey was itself highly restricted by the tight timelines imposed by the government and pales in comparison to the data, participation and goodwill that could have been generated using state apparatus.

Other Concerns

While the above topics highlight the majority view of our survey respondents we feel the need to ensure that dissenting views and other suggestions are included in this report. Many respondents noted a feeling of alienation from politics and even this particular topic. Fewer than twenty percent of respondents had read the consultation paper before clicking our survey (which included a direct link).

43% of respondents did not believe that the voting age should be lowered at all, however, of those who gave reasoning, half directly mentioned a lack of experience or access to information which we believe could be remedied through the education and engagement initiatives outlined above.

Several suggestions were put forward by respondents about improving political literacy with the most common suggestion being that government decision-making, discussion and rationale be more readily available online. Another suggestion for young people specifically mentioned the introduction of debating in schools.

Finally, several issues were raised about our electoral system which while not directly pertinent to the consultation, does speak to a broader issue causing alienation from politics with respondents feeling that their elected government and opposition do not accurately represent a cross-section of Gibraltar, especially young Gibraltarians.

Conclusion

To conclude, Together Gibraltar’s membership and executive overwhelmingly supported the notion that 16-year-olds should be allowed to vote. It is fundamental to our values to make politics more inclusive, and it would be misinformed to exclude a group that we know can make a difference, and that research shows are more than capable of political maturity. Nowadays, young people and older generations often hold differing perspectives on political issues, but because 16-year-olds cannot vote, their perspectives are inadequately represented. Lowering the voting age is not just about gathering more votes, it is about representat`ion and participation.

Of course, this discussion is broad. We have spent many hours attempting to inform ourselves about the academic discussion alongside what the public believes. What we do understand is that giving the vote to 16-year-olds in a structured and informed manner is one of the key ways in which the youth can engage with ideas outside of their experience and become informed regarding local issues.

To be explicit in our stance, we believe it would be beneficial to introduce voting, and civic engagement, earlier so that Gibraltarian youth are given opportunities to engage with politics, and possibly even become the next political juggernauts that would ensure that Gibraltar continues to thrive.

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Bergh, J. (2013). Does voting rights affect the political maturity of 16- and 17-year-olds? Findings from the 2011 Norwegian voting-age trial. Electoral Studies, 32(1), 90–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2012.11.001

Chan, T. W., & Clayton, M. (2006). Should the voting age be lowered to sixteen? Normative and empirical considerations. Political Studies, 54(3), 533–558. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2006.00620.x

Consultation principles: guidance. (2012, July 17). Gov.uk. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/consultation-principles-guidance

Dahlgaard, J. O. (2018). Trickle-up political socialization: The causal effect on turnout of parenting a newly enfranchised voter. The American Political Science Review, 112(3), 698–705. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055418000059

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Pew Research Centre (2023) More Americans are getting news on TikTok https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/11/15/more-americans-are-getting-news-on-tiktok-bucking-the-trend-seen-on-most-other-social-media-sites/

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Zeglovits, E., & Aichholzer, J. (2014). Are people more inclined to vote at 16 than at 18? Evidence for the first-time voting boost among 16- to 25-year-Olds in Austria. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, 24(3), 351–361. https://doi.org/10.1080/17457289.2013.872652

Zeglovits, E., & Zandonella, M. (2013). Political interest of adolescents before and after lowering the voting age: the case of Austria. Journal of Youth Studies, 16(8), 1084–1104. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2013.793785

Appendix

In order to further inform our submission, the following questions were presented to participants via social media. A total of 64 responses were received answering at least one question.

Do you think those aged 16 & 17 should have the right to vote in general elections, and why do you think that way?

Do you think those aged 16-17 to vote should be allowed to vote in referendums (as was done during the June 2021 referendum) and why do you think that way?

If you have a different answer to questions 1 and 2, what causes the difference in your opinion?

What are the measures that you think could be put in place to improve access to politics and political education for young people in Gibraltar?

What are the measures that you think could be put in place to improve access to politics and political education for everyone of voting age in Gibraltar?

Which of the potential ‘Pro’s outlined on pages 5-6 of the consultation paper do you think presents the greatest potential benefit to Gibraltar?

Which of the potential ‘Cons’s outlined on page 6-7 of the consultation paper do you think presents the greatest risk to Gibraltar?

How else could we improve elections and access to voting in Gibraltar?

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