Letter: Scotland’s young people deserve this vote

While the referendum will be one of the most important choices voters in Scotland have ever been asked to make, it is Scotland’s young people who will live with the outcome of that vote.

The reality is that giving young adults the right to vote would reflect a widely held vision of what Scotland as a progressive, rights-respecting country could become.

I disagree with the view that extending the vote to young people is a political gimmick, or – as Professor John Curtice writing in your paper last Sunday would seem to suggest – that young people are largely politically disengaged.

My consultation in 2010-11 with children and young people – A RIGHT Blether – in which nearly 75,000 voted in a ballot, gave the lie to the assumption that young people are apathetic.

The quality of their ideas and the passion with which they expressed their views demonstrated how enthused, informed and articulate many young people are about the kind of country they want to live in. They are highly motivated when they have a stake in the issues.

However, due to election cycles, many young people do not actually get to exercise their right to vote in a general election until they are in their twenties. By this time, many have lost interest. Allowing them to vote at a younger age would help to buck this trend.

For the process of extending voting rights to be credible, we need to ensure that we do not exclude any 16 and 17-year-olds. And for this reason, the electoral register should allow 14 and 15-year-olds to go on to the full register (but not the publicly available version). I think this is a surmountable technical issue. I hope that it is one the Electoral Commission and the Election Management Board will give early thought to, and that 16 and 17-year-olds will be fully enfranchised for the referendum vote.

Tam Baillie

Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People