Dear Editor,
I strongly believe that the legal age to vote for federal elections should be lowered to the age of 16. I am currently 14 and I do keep up to date with the political world more than some adults I know.
We should be encouraging our youth to be more involved in Canada, and what better way than to allow them to choose who they want as a leader?
We have already seen different schools have their own elections, but why not take it a step further and actually allow more Canadians to vote. Several school election results end up being different than the actual results in the real election. It would definitely have an impact on the election, and for the better. We need to put into consideration what every citizen wants Canada to become. Some may argue that we can be persuaded easily and become “brainwashed” by our parents.
But children grow up learning their own beliefs so that when they reach adulthood they already have their beliefs set into place.
Why don’t we just take advantage of how teenagers already have their beliefs and know what they want in our society? There are seven countries known to have the voting age of 16, such as Brazil and Cuba. For all of these reasons and more I wish for our legal age to vote be lowered to the age of 16.
Allison Carver
Richmond
