Teenagers won’t fix Medway’s turnout problem

But other new measures might make a more meaningful impact, argues former Civil servant and new Local Authority writer Bob Collins

The government’s plans to give the vote to 16 and 17-year-olds have proved controversial, with some arguing it’s a nakedly political effort to tip the electorate in their favour. Does that stack up, though? Former civil servant and new Local Authority columnist Bob Collins crunches the numbers and finds there might be a bigger story that few have noticed…

Teenagers won’t fix Medway’s turnout problem

by Bob Collins

On 17 July, the government published some proposals for strengthening the UK’s electoral system. The eye-catching headline (and the one that the government wanted your eye to catch in its own press release) was ‘votes for 16-year-olds.’ But that was only one of the many proposals put forward, and arguably not the most far-reaching one.

For anyone hoping for sweeping changes like the ushering in of proportional representation, mandatory voting, or state funding for election campaigning, you will be disappointed. None of that is even mentioned.

But other measures include automatic voter registration, tightening election expenses rules, and getting tougher on intimidation of candidates and election workers.

Why are they doing all this? Well, the clearly stated objective is to re-energise our democratic system and increase participation and turnout. Now, of course, most people’s first instinct will be to say the way to do that is for politicians to be a bit more inspiring and appealing and give people something to vote for. Very fair comment. But accepting that this paper is solely about the electoral system rather than the quality of parties and candidates, let’s look at the proposals themselves and how they might affect Medway.

The General Election 2024 turnout was 60% the second lowest since 1918, and the Medway constituencies were all below the national average (Gillingham and Rainham 56%, Chatham and Aylesford 54%, Rochester and Strood 57%) and all in the bottom third of turnout. You might expect marginal constituencies like ours to attract higher turnout, but it turns out there is actually no correlation between these things at all.