New Zealand Supreme Court Says Voting Age of 18 'Discriminatory'

The Supreme Court of New Zealand ruled on Monday that the current voting age of 18 is discriminatory because New Zealanders are considered adults in various other respects at the age of 16.

Far-left Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern supports reducing the voting age and wants Parliament to introduce legislation to that effect, although it seems unlikely such a bill could reach the 75 percent majority needed for passage.

The voting age challenge was launched in 2020 by a group called Make It 16, which argued that New Zealand’s current voting age of 18 is “unjustified age discrimination under the Bill of Rights.” 

The suit brought by Make It 16 argued more specifically that the 1990 Bill of Rights Act forbid “age discrimination” against young people unless the age limits could be “justified.” Since New Zealanders can legally drive, work full-time, and pay taxes at age 16, the group argued that limiting the vote to ages 18 and up was unjustified.

The Supreme Court agreed on Monday and Ardern immediately announced her government would introduce legislation to lower the voting age.

“It is our view that this is an issue best placed to parliament for everyone to have their say,” Ardern said.

“This is history. The government and parliament cannot ignore such a clear legal and moral message. They must let us vote,” Make It 16 co-director Caeden Tipler declared.

As a matter of fact, “they” do not have to let 16-year-olds vote solely because of the Supreme Court ruling. The court did not strike down New Zealand’s existing system. Parliament can change the rules, but changes to electoral law require a 75-percent majority, and several parties have already announced their opposition.

“Many other countries have a voting age of 18, and National has seen no compelling case to lower the age,” the opposition National Party said on Monday.

“Obviously, we’ve got to draw a line somewhere. We’re comfortable with the line being 18. Lots of different countries have different places where the line’s drawn and from our point of view, 18’s just fine,” National Party leader Christopher Luxon said.

The BBC noted that Ardern’s own Labour Party has not officially taken a position on changing the voting age yet.

Make It 16 activists told the UK Guardian that issues like climate change and health care inspired their effort to change voting rules, because they felt such matters are more relevant for young people:

The Make It 16 campaign launched shortly after school strikes for climate began mobilising tens of thousands of teenagers across the country, and the climate crisis has loomed large in the background. “Three years ago, we saw school strikes for climate … and there was a sort of global shift towards: how do we give young people more of a say and more of a way to make change on a large scale? Voting was one of those ideas,” said Sanat Singh, Make it 16’s co-founder.

While climate action had been a motivating force, Singh said the same logic – that young people should have a say in issues affecting them – applied to all politics, from public transport funding to mental health. “I was 16 in 2020, which was probably one of the most consequential elections in our lifetime – and issues that mattered to me about mental health, climate change and the state of our democracy were things that I was not able to have a say in,” Singh said.

The Guardian quoted a rather more extreme advocate of reduced voting ages whose remarks suggested certain ideologues have done the math and realized the aging populations created by reduced birth rates in industrialized nations are making the youth vote less significant:

In recent years, however, international campaigns to lower voting ages have grown, with many arguing that young people should have a say on long-term democratic decisions, given they will have to live with the consequences. 

Prominent UK academic Prof David Runciman has argued that the voting age should be lowered to six, saying ageing populations meant young people were now “massively outnumbered”, creating a democratic crisis and an inbuilt bias against governments that plan for the future.

In New Zealand, at least, the relevant legislation specifies 16 as the lower limit for protection from “age discrimination,” so the Make It 6 movement would have a hard time getting off the ground. 

Globally, only Brazil, Cuba, Austria, and Malta currently allow 16-year-olds to vote in national elections. Several left-wing parties in Germany support lowering the federal voting age to 16, but the governing center-right coalition is broadly opposed, and German law restricts many other privileges of adulthood to 18 rather than 16.