• Also the electoral reform in the Pd-M5S government program. Conte: "We have a unique opportunity"
  • Electoral law reform: from Veneto, Lombardy and Sardinia go ahead to the referendum

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September 30, 2019 Luigi Di Maio, leader of the 5 Star Movement and foreign affairs minister of the new Giallorossi government, spoke with a post on Facebook about voting for minors: "The vote for sixteen year olds is a proposal that we have always pursued and that we strongly support ". Listen to young people, respect them and put them at the center of politics.

This is the idea of ​​the grillino, already advanced in 2017 by Beppe Grillo through a post on his blog where he explained that the M5S would fight to give sixteen year olds the right to vote. So a return to office. "If at the age of 16 a young person can work and pay taxes, he should at least also have the right to vote and choose who decides on his life," writes Di Maio, who adds: "Let's discuss it immediately in Parliament, because these are the constitutional reforms that change the prospects of a country and that encourage us to always do better ".



The ex-premier Enrico Letta, now director of the Institute of Political Studies in Paris, is also asking for it, who in an interview with La Repubblica says he wants to focus on young people, opening the Ius culturae dossier - or citizenship for the foreign minor, born or entered in Italy within the age of 12, who has regularly attended 5 years of school - and to lower the voting age to 16 years. On Twitter, the hashtag #VotoaiSedicenni has immediately become viral.

Today in Italy all citizens of at least 18 years have the right to vote. For the election of the Senate, then, the minimum age of 25 is required. The same minimum threshold to go to the polls is also present in the USA, Canada, China, India and Russia.

In which countries do you vote at 16?
Austria, a country belonging to the European Union since 1995, since 2007 allows voting even for sixteen year olds. In Austria you must be at least 18 years old to be elected (35 to become president of the Republic). In the last elections he won, as in 2017, Sebastian Kurz, 33, the youngest head of government in the world. And over 75% of those with the right went to the vote (76.6%).

In Scotland the under-18s could vote in the 2014 Independence Referendum and from the following year the youngest can cast their vote in all political consultations (national and local) in their country. However, the exclusion of 16-year-olds from the Brexit vote (June 23, 2016) has caused considerable controversy.

In Germany the right to vote for 16-year-olds is guaranteed in the elections of the Parliaments of some Länder (federated states), as well as in Norway, which in 2011 made an experiment by extending the right to 16-year-olds for local elections.

In non-European countries that allow sixteen-year-olds to vote include Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador and Nicaragua.