A post by Oldage on today's daily news just brought something to mind and I thought it would be a good discussion point.
There's been a long standing debate about whether certain age groups should be allowed to vote. This is clearly a sensitive topic but has become more and more prevalent in recent votes where certain age groups were more likely to vote for one outcome and another group another.
For example, Brexit was majoritively voted for by the "older" generations and majoritively voted against by the "younger generation".
Politics, and democracy especially, is a game of short-termism and a constant requirement to deliver immediate (or near term) results to their constituents and therefore bigger, more important things (climate, pollution, proper investment - ignoring HS2 here as that's just rubbish - etc.) get ignored as they're hard decisions that are unlikely to win votes. Chasing the "grey vote" is something that regularly comes up and the wants of the younger voters is ignored.
In America recently there was a drive to disenfranchise younger voters because they were more likely to vote Democratic rather than adjusting policies to take into account their needs. Political institutions are scared of younger voters as their views tend to be more radical and questioning the norm.
So the question is should there be an age cap on those allowed to vote? Should there be certain referenda only available to be voted on by those who would be deemed to have their lives affected by it most? Can we trust younger people to make life defining decisions that will impact us all?