Parental influence

Would 16 yr old children need parental permission slips to go to a polling station?

Hopefully they would have some friends at the vintage age of 17 years to give them a car lift to the station, and an old fogey 18 yr old coming along for the ride so he/she can take legal responsibility for them!


- On a serious note, in this day and age we are thankfully starting to move away from tribally voting for parties - giving sixteen and seventeen year olds the vote will mean a significant proportion of voters will be voting according to parental influence (or coercion).

- It is equally undesirable to have teenage rebels who will vote for any party other than the one their parents vote for.

- There is no doubt that, in a bid to be different, a higher proportion of 16/17 yr olds would vote for extremist parties than more elderly and experienced voters do.

- Postal voting is already susceptible to fraud - adults open the post in a household, their children are unlikely to know there is an election going on.. what do you think will happen in that situation?