The voting age should be lowered to 16 --- Sponsored by the Electoral Reform Society

The limit of 18 is ultimately arbitrary, it used to be 21, and previous to that it was 21 for men and 30. The reasons cited for this higher age boundary were exactly the same arguments as are being used by those who oppose lowering the voting age to 16, namely that the individuals would be too immature or ignorant to use their vote wisely. As we have seen, 18 year olds are just as capable of making informed democratic choices as 21 year olds, and there isn't any magical transformative process which occurs between 16 and 18 which turns individuals into fully fledged democratic citizens. Rather, maturity occurs on a spectrum, and as will be outlined below, some 16 year olds may be equally or better informed about politics than people much their senior who have the vote. More to the point, there are many things which 16 year olds are deemed by the state to be mature enough to do. For example, you can marry, leave full time education, leave home, and get a full time job, all of which are serious responsibilities. More seriously than that, at 16 one can volunteer for military service, and it seems implausible to claim that one can be simultaneously mature enough to volunteer to fight for one's country yet immature enough to vote.

By excluding a certain set of people (in this case, under 18s) you are neglecting a particular social group with a distinct set of interests and needs. Young people have views on education which may well differ from those of the teaching unions, and they are still "stakeholders" in the education process. Similarly, regarding such issues as the way in which youth groups are treated by the police (particularly the use of anti-social behaviour orders) provision of youth recreational facilities, minimum wage variations amongst young people, all of these are issues in which young people both have a view and are affected by the policies implemented. Why should their views (if we go with the assumption that democracies are supposed to take all relevant interests into account) less valuable than others, particularly those who may not be stakeholders in certain aspects of policy (such as childless adults who cast votes which affect education policy).

The assumption that young people are too ignorant of politics to be entitled to vote is flawed for three reasons. Firstly, as a result of such initiatives as the Youth Parliament, and the increasing role young people are taking in protest groups (think of the sympathy protests in schools against the Iraq war) it is not at all clear that young people are especially politically apathetic or lacking knowledge relative to the rest of the population. Secondly, we do not make voting conditional on the awareness that the individual has about current political issues (we don't have general knowledge quizzes before you get your voting card, so this argument could be rolled out to deprive some adults of the vote. Further to this, if young people are not able to vote until they are eighteen, then the incentives to inform oneself about politics are significantly reduced (and part of the function of a democracy is to act as a political education for its citizens). Finally, even if we do concede that young people may know less and be less interested in politics than the average individual, the act of voting is self selecting. People who are less interested in politics will be less likely to go out and vote, whether they are young people or adults. What this effectively means is that the people who will be able to take advantage of the lowering of the voting age are most likely to be politically aware teenagers, those with little interest are unlikely to turn out.

As with many of the arguments in favour of lowering the voting age, this falls apart to a degree if you accept the need for some limit (so new-born babies don't get to vote), since whatever limit is chose will be arbitrary (16 is no less arbitrary than 18)$1  
thats just it teens as we know do not plan ahead so you need your parents permission to be married and if you quit school how does that make you qualified to make a decision that will probably be the most important decision of your high school drop out life. and if you leave your home while you're a teen it's called running away so conclusion teens don't plan what is going to happen with their life so they don't know what to expect from life and just head straight into a wall instead of turning you should learn that in high school.