2025-04-09
33 分钟This is The Guardian.
Hello, my name is David Runciman.
I'm the host of the podcast Past, Present, Future comes out twice a week.
It's about the history of ideas, including ideas of democracy.
And I'm the author of Votes for Children, Why We Should Lower the Voting Age to Six, which was published in 2021.
I came to this story because I was researching and writing a book about the history of democracy.
And I was struck by the fact that in the long history of democracy, when things are really fractious and difficult,
one of the ways out is to enfranchise people who don't have to vote women working people.
I think minorities, religious minorities, and I found myself thinking, it's a shame we got no one left to enfranchise.
And then I found myself thinking, of course, we do children.
And I started to look into it.
And the more I looked into it, the more I realized that the arguments against were very weak.
And the arguments for were pretty persuasive.
I don't think I've ever believed that the voting age would be lowered to six.
There's a lot of argument about whether it should be lowered to 16.
The New Labour government made a commitment to that, which it looks like they may well renege on.
I'm not even sure where we are with that.
But part of the reason I wrote this piece, I believe in the case,
but it's also to try and highlight the fact that our democracies are really struggling.
Young people in particular seem to feel disenfranchised, cut off, disillusioned with democracy.