Debate contribution: Voting Age: 16- and 17-year-olds

Debate contribution by Mrs Michelle Guy on 24 September 2024.

MLA: Mrs Michelle Guy
Party at the time: Alliance Party
Date: 24 September 2024
Type: Debate contribution
Business: Private Members' Business
Heading: Voting Age: 16- and 17-year-olds
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 4644869

Text

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am genuinely honoured to stand here as the new MLA for Lagan Valley. I extend my sincere congratulations and thanks to the formidable Sorcha Eastwood MP, who occupied the seat before me. Sorcha, you leave big shoes and brightly coloured handbags to fill, but as with you and our Lagan Valley colleague, David Honeyford, our cause is simple: to make this place the best version of itself now for everyone who lives here. I also extend my thanks to our amazing councillors and members of the Lagan Valley association for encouraging me to go for this opportunity and for their help and support since my selection. You really are a special group, and I will do all that I can to be worthy of the faith that you have shown in me. I love the motion. I love its objective and what, evidence tells us, will be its outworking: more engaged, civically aware and active young citizens who will contribute more because voting gives them a greater stake in our society. If it is delivered — rather, when it is delivered — it will be a hugely significant change that will be transformative for our democracy locally. Extending the franchise to a new cohort is a big deal, and history tells us that it is something that too many people were denied in the past for very dark reasons. The movement for votes at 16 does not fall into that bracket. Arguably, resistance to the move can be categorised as ignorant, maybe patronising and certainly ill informed, given the evidence base that it is a positive move for democracy. To my knowledge, no country that has extended the franchise in this way has since reneged on it. As a group, our young people are anything but ill informed, and they are certainly not passive citizens. They volunteer in our communities, participate in our workforce and are carers. They increasingly inform and help to co-design policies that impact on them, but they have no right to express their verdict democratically on those same policy outcomes in the way that the rest of us can by voting in elections. This being my maiden speech, it feels appropriate to mention my own two young people. My Dan is only 13, so I reckon that he is more concerned with FIFA packs and his under-14 championship final this Friday. Good luck, boys. I would, however, let Caitlin vote tomorrow. This is the girl who was 10 at the last US elections and, on results night, came down the stairs, even though she was quite tired and should have been sleeping, to ask whether there was any word on Pennsylvania.
She is informed and engaged, and, when she turns 16 in a couple of years' time, she has the right to express herself democratically. I sit on the Education Committee, and our amendment calls for:
"high-quality and expansive civic education"
alongside the introduction of votes at 16. It is important to emphasise that that recommendation is not about inserting some form of conditionality on extending the right to vote; rather, it would be a complementary measure. Not only is it recommended in the 2023 Out of Kilter report but our young people tell us that provision in that space is inadequate. A Secondary Students' Union report in 2023, 'Let Us Learn', states that nearly 80% of students said no when asked whether they had been taught about democracy and active participation in learning for life and work (LLW). Furthermore, our amendment calls expressly for high-quality provision, and that is important. The all-party parliamentary group on Votes at 16 report in 2019 stated that civic education was important but not all forms of civic education worked equally well and that ill-conceived measures may be counterproductive. I want to bookend the speech by thanking my family. It was a wee bit too risky to do that earlier in case I got emotional. To Chris, the kids, my parents, sisters and close friends, who know that I am doing this, in their words, for the right reasons and who have supported me through so much this year in particular, I say, "Thank you, and I love you".
Oops, sorry. That was dramatic at the end.

712 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Awaiting analysis

This record has not been analysed yet. It is not counted in any total until it has been assessed.

Disagree with this assessment?

Classifications can be challenged. A person reviews every challenge, and any change is recorded publicly above with its reason.

Challenge this classification