Earning your licence to vote

British Labour Party leader, Ed Miliband, wants to lower the voting age for UK elections from 18 to 16. The Liberal Democrats agree with him, and in Scotland, the Nationalist government has legislated to ensure that 16 year-olds will be eligible to vote in next year's independence referendum.

All these parties expect to strengthen their support by lowering the voting age, reasoning that young people tend to be more radical. But leaving aside the electoral arithmetic, is it a good idea?

Many sixteen year-olds work and pay taxes. At 16 you can get married and start a family; at 17 you can join the armed forces and die for your country. It doesn't seem unreasonable, therefore, to allow 16 and 17 year-olds to vote.

The main argument against is that they may be too immature to be given this responsibility. But while it is true that some youngsters are ill-equipped to make well-informed and sound political judgements, this applies to many older people too. Surveys indicate that many people vote for parties with no idea what they are voting for, or why.

In his essay on Representative Government, John Stuart Mill argued that voting should depend on your level of education. He thought it devalues citizenship to allow ignorant people to vote. It undermines liberal democracy if ignorance is given the same weight as informed decision-making in the polling booth.

Nowadays, of course, everyone is 'educated,' but this guarantees little as regards their knowledgability, responsibility, or plain common sense. Applying Mill's reasoning today, we might suggest that what is needed is a citizenship test which people should be required to pass before they are allowed to vote.

This idea will sound particularly odd to Australians who have grown accustomed to compuIsory voting. Rather than forcing people to vote even when they don't know or care what they are doing, people would not be allowed to vote until they had demonstrated a basic level of competence. But as Mill argued, the result would strengthen democracy, not weaken it.

A simple voting test, which would only have to be passed once in a person's lifetime, would raise people's understanding of the parliamentary system, the parties, and key areas of public policy such as taxation, inflation, defence and welfare. Just as you have to take a test before you are allowed to drive, so you would have to earn your 'licence to vote' before being allowed to choose the government. We require this demonstration of knowledge from new immigrants, so why not of natives too?

Much like passing the driving test, passing the voting test would be a public recognition of achievement and competence. A qualifying test for all new voters over the age of 16 would endow the act of voting with a status and gravitas that it currently lacks. It would preserve the universal right to vote, but it would emphasise that this precious right comes with the responsibility to inform yourself about what you are doing before you cast your ballot.

Professor Peter Saunders is a Senior Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies.