It is just about a good reason perhaps that the young will see and regret the errors and naivety of their first voting decisions earlier than they otherwise would and because of their youthful energy and available time contribute more and earlier to the flow on from understanding their errors….. However, that presupposes regrettable & acknowledged errors so it has drawbacks as an argument.

In the end, if I were to hope for the reclamation of your mind and good sense I would ask you to revisit (to conflate accurately) “Democracy will cope with teenagers’stupid, ill-informed, improperly influenced votes as it does with those of lots of adults”. You haven’t quite put a case for chimpanzees voting by their next friends but it does seem curious that you say that democracy will cope, by which I take you to mean metaphorically that the mechanisms of democracy function satisfactorily and will not be much affected in operation, even though the electorate is less capable of knowing its own interests or how any of even its sensible objectives can best be achieved.

I take it that you agree with the notion that the main purpose of a democratic constitution is to allow occasional changes of government without violence and with sufficient relation to changing opinion in the country, rather than sheer randomness (which would be a theoretical possibility for a change of government system) to stop too many people feeling disaffected. But that doesn’t constrain the design much so where do you get your principles for electing representatives? And, to the extent that we must appease people’s feeling that they should have and do have rights, do we care that people are enabled to vote so they can vote in what they perceive to be their own interests so they won’t feel disenfranchised and bolshy (in which case we shouldn’t have to worry about teenagers who are being supported by state and parents), or so that they will form an electorate best able to vote in their own interests, and/or so they can and are likely to vote high-mindedly for some greater public good? It doesn’t seem to me that either of the latter two reasons gives any support to votes for even younger people than 18 year olds still emerging from whatever fashionable influences our schools leave them under.

Of course, lots of teenagers cast stupid, ill-informed, improperly influenced votes. So do lots of adults. Democracy will cope with one as it copes with the other.

As to who thought Reagan was a successful president in his 70s, he won a 49-state landslide at the age of 72, so he must have been doing something right.

I was still a youngish tutor of v. bright (and not so bright) law students when the vote was given to 18 year olds. Apparently all politicians wanted to be fashionable and not leave it to the rising tide of lefty thinking to make this great advance so decided that there was this killer argument, namely that, if they were old enough to fight (actually it was because of the foolish conscription policy that Liberals got themselves into this problem) they were old enough to vote, or perhaps it was something even more illogical, namely some view that they should be able to vote against conscription - a bit late really. As I knew very well what 18 and 19 year olds were like, even the brightest and best informed I could see it was just the ridiculous faddishness of the middle-aged because….. and here we get to the crunch… no one asked whether having the real stake in the country that 25 plus people did and just a little experience of the adult world and of adult motivation and of intelligent adult argument might have any relevance to the question whether our country would be improved by giving 18 year olds the vote. And you don’t seem to consider that adding a whole lot of ill-informed adolescents with no experience of working life to the voting roles in circumstances of complex modern life with many sources of attempted manipulation of some sophistication that they are just beginning to come to grips with might lead to many more votes being cast which are only casually related to the good of the good of the country - *however* defined.

The catalyst program on teenagers doesn’t tell us anything new, but we restrict the ability of under 18s to make enforceable contracts, to buy alchohol, to do something like driving that they are perfectly equipped to do except for the deficiencies of temperament and brain function that you might think relevant to the likelihood that they will cast a considered vote (other than for cash) without being carried away by populist prejudice and rhetoric or passing whim unconnected even to their own real interests. Presumably you would approve their marrying at 16 or younger, drinking alcohol without limit at night clubs and bars, driving trucks and joining the SAS. If not, why not? Do you seriously think it would benefit them or anyone to give them the chance to cast a vote which they would almost certainly, if at all thoughtful and sensible, regard as at best gravely ill-informed and not even in their own interests by the time they are five years older? Of course it will encourage some small number to get interested in politics earlier and presumably recruit some Young Liberals and Young Labor a year or two earlier than otherwise. Is that a good thing?