Britain will lower its voting age to 16 in a bid to strengthen democracy

LONDON (AP) — Britain will lower the voting age from 18 to 16 by the next national election as part of measures to increase democratic participation, the government announced Thursday.

The center-left Labour Party pledged before it was elected in July 2024 to lower the voting age for elections to Britain’s Parliament. Scotland and Wales already let 16- and 17-year-olds vote in local and regional elections.

Britain will join the short list of countries where the voting age is 16, alongside the likes of Austria, Brazil and Ecuador. A handful of European Union countries, including Belgium, Germany and Malta, allow 16-year-olds to vote in elections to the European Parliament.

The move comes alongside wider reforms that include tightening campaign financing rules to stop shell companies with murky ownership from donating to political parties. Democracy Minister Rushanara Ali said the change would strengthen safeguards against foreign interference in British politics.

There will also be tougher sentences for people convicted of intimidating candidates.

Additionally, the government said it will introduce automatic voter registration and allow voters to use bank cards as a form of identification at polling stations.

The previous Conservative government introduced a requirement for voters to show photo identification in 2022, a measure it said would combat fraud. Critics argued it could disenfranchise millions of voters, particularly the young, the poor and members of ethnic minorities.

Elections watchdog the Electoral Commission estimates that about 750,000 people did not vote in last year’s election because they lacked ID.

Turnout in the 2024 election was 59.7%, the lowest level in more than two decades.

Harry Quilter-Pinner, head of left-leaning think tank the Institute for Public Policy Research, said the changes were “the biggest reform to our electoral system since 1969,” when the voting age was lowered to 18 from 21.

The changes must be approved by Parliament. The next national election must be held by 2029.

“For too long, public trust in our democracy has been damaged and faith in our institutions has been allowed to decline,” Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner said. “We are taking action to break down barriers to participation that will ensure more people have the opportunity to engage in U.K. democracy.”

Stuart Fox, a politics lecturer at the University of Exeter who has studied youth voting, said it’s “far from clear” whether lowering the voting age actually increases youth engagement.

“It is right to help young people be heard,” he said. “But there are other measures which are more effective at getting young people to vote — particularly those from the poorest backgrounds who are by far the least likely to vote — such as beefing up the citizenship curriculum or expanding the provision of volunteering programs in schools.”