New Zealand’s Supreme Court has accepted an appeal to lower the voting age to 16, arguing that the rule preventing 16- and 17-year-olds from voting is discriminatory on the basis of age.
The decision states that setting the minimum voting age at 18 has not been justified as a reasonable limit on people’s right to vote.
The ‘Make It 16’ group argued that the voting age of 18 is a violation of human rights, so it intends to force Parliament to submit the issue to a special debate.
With Monday’s ruling, the judges, Ellen France and O’Regan, have ruled that an earlier Court of Appeal decision rejecting the Make It 16 case should be overturned.
The initiative’s co-director, Caeden Tipler, has called the Supreme Court’s ruling «historic», indicating that they are confident that the law will change.
«There is a formal process for Parliament to analyze the declaration of inconsistency and we are very optimistic that, once Parliament reviews the decision, (lawmakers) will see that lowering the voting age is the right thing to do,» Tipler said.
«Although we are celebrating, we still have a lot more to do,» the activist acknowledged in statements reported by the ‘NZ Herald’ newspaper.
The New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, said that the Supreme Court’s ruling on Monday does not mean that Parliament is obliged to change the law.
«The Cabinet has discussed the process following the ruling and has decided to draft legislation for Parliament to consider lowering the voting age to 16,» Ardern explained, before acknowledging that such a law would not be in place for the next election.
For her part, the prime minister has personally supported the age reduction, but has qualified that a consensus of 75 percent of the Lower House is needed. «I think we should do away with politics, we should let each parliamentarian express his or her opinion,» she has maintained.
