Title: Should the Voting Age be Lowered to Sixteen? Normative and Empirical Considerations
Author(s): Tak Wing Chan and Matthew Clayton
Journal: Political Studies 54?(3).

Move	Introduction 2: Full text
Move 1: Establish A Territory	The questions of whether there should be a minimum voting age and, if so, at what age it should be set, are significant political issues, because having the vote is widely recognised as one of the most important legal rights within a democracy. In the absence of some compelling argument, the exclusion of a particular section of the population is standardly taken to be a serious violation of political equality.
Move 2: Establish A Niche	And yet, until recently, the exclusion of teenagers from the vote has received comparatively little attention in public debate (Schrag, 2004). Nevertheless, the question of the voting age is now a subject of political debate. In 2003–4, the UK Electoral Commission conducted an extensive public consultation on the question of the minimum age of voting and candidacy in UK elections (Electoral Commission, 2003; 2004). In its final report, Age of Electoral Majority, the Commission recommends that while the age of candidacy should be lowered from 21 to 18, the voting age should stay at 18 (Electoral Commission, 2004). The Commission considers several arguments that have been advanced in favour of lowering the voting age to sixteen. Among these arguments are: (1) those that demand consistency in the treatment of voting and other social and economic rights; (2) the related argument that sixteen-year-olds are sufficiently mature to vote; (3) the appeal to public demand or public opinion; and (4) the argument that positive effects on political participation will follow from lowering the voting age. In each case, the Commission marshals arguments and evidence to show that the case for lowering the voting age is not conclusively established.
Move 3: Present the Present Work	In this article, we begin by addressing some normative matters that attend the voting age debate. We challenge certain arguments that the Commission and others deploy in defence of retaining the status quo. Thereafter, we offer arguments that support the justice of an age-based allocation of voting rights, which rest on the importance of political maturity for democracy. These normative considerations motivate the need for an examination of certain empirical questions concerning the relationship between age and political maturity. Thus we turn to an examination of available survey data that are relevant to the question of the age of electoral majority. On the basis of these considerations we defend the conclusion that the voting age should not be lowered to sixteen, as some have demanded.