Why The Voting Age Should Not Be Lowered

[Canadian_Cavalier]

Hello everyone. I am new to this site, wanted to talk to likeminded people.

Sometimes, I see talk of wanting to lower the voting age to 16. For me as a young conservative Canadian, this is absolutely ludicrous but I had trouble stating why without having to bring up personal interactions. Now I have proof.

In 2022, a student vote mock election was held in Ontario along with the real one adults got to vote in. While adults elected Doug Ford with one of the largest PC majorities in decades, students went the complete opposite way and chose the NDP. 

Now, the problem isn't that I personally disagree with the NDP, it's that the fact that minors having different experiences and rights than adults sways their vote. Few pay rent or that many taxes which could've made them vote closer with adults.

The biggest piece of evidence I have aside from that are the Student Vote results specifically in the riding of Parry Sound - Muskoka. In the actual election, this place was somewhat of an oddity. Like the rest of Central Ontario, the PC candidate won in the actual election, but the Green Party wasn't very far behind due to the riding having no liberal candidate. Unsurprisingly, the Green Party won here in the Student Vote. But the biggest oddity is actually the performance of Andrew John Cocks, the candidate for the minor right-wing Ontario Party. In the actual election, he only got 3% of the vote. In the Student Vote, he got 20%.

Since the Ontario Party is nowhere near as popular in neighboring areas as there, I am led to conclude that there were a lot of students who only voted for Cocks because they thought his last name sounded funny. This means that many of these students are politically unserious, and raising the voting age if anything else should be more palatable than lowering it.