Why children and youth should have the right to vote
Many now recognize, at least in principle,that the third of humanity who are under 18 years of age ought to possess a degree of political rights. Children and youth are citizens of their countries deserving voices in the public arenas that affect their lives. Indeed, children have gained an increased political standing in many parts of the world, especially since the near-universal ratification of the 1989 Convention on the Rights of Child (CRC), which includes political rights such as to free speech and assembly. At the same time, however, children and youth are almost universally denied what it arguably the most basic political right of all, namely the right to vote. This right has gradually been extended to other groups such as the poor, ethnic minorities, and women over the past century and a half. Nevertheless, despite a growing movement of young people and child suffrage advocates, the right to vote for minors remains little discussed in the academy and largely unthinkable in the general public. [...]
The most obvious example of this underlying competence can be found in the 30 or so children's parliaments that now exist around the world. Here, children from ages 5 to 17 elect local representatives who in turn elect regional, national, and sometimes international representatives to fight for children's concerns and speak before adult parliaments. While many children's parliaments are largely educational or tokenistic, many also provide significant political powers to youth and children as young as 5 (Wall 2012). Some even provide children parts of budgets (Cabannes 2006). Studies of children's parliaments demonstrate that quite young children are fully capable of debating and voting upon major political issues such as health provision, non-discrimination, educational infrastructure, child abuse, citizen birth certificates, violence in schools, gender equity, environmental protections, and much else (Austin 2010; Conrad 2009; Sarkar and Mendoza 2005). Even if one could argue, therefore, that the very youngest of children lack competencies to vote, it is evident that any specific age of competence is both problematic to define and younger than historically assumed. [...]
Should schools be involved in registration or voting so as to make children's suffrage more widely available, or should they be excluded to avoid undue political influence? Should children also be able to run for office, and if so how would that be balanced with the right not to work and to full-time education? While these and other questions cannot be answered here, I would simply note that, however they might be resolved, in all cases the result would be an improvement on the current situation in which all citizens under the age of 18 are disenfranchised entirely. It would be an improvement, in other words, in democracy's democratization.
source: Article 'Why Children and Youth Should Have the Right to Vote: An Argument for Proxy-Claim Suffrage' by John Wall (Departments of Philosophy and Religion, and Childhood Studies, Rutgers University, Camden, New Jersey); johnwall.camden.rutgers.edu/files/Wall-Right-to-Vote-CYE-2014.pdf; Children, Youth and Environments, 24(1); 2014