Voting age 16 comes to the ballot box in the canton of Zurich
The Zurich Cantonal Council approved the introduction of voting age 16 on Monday – against the opposition of the SVP and FDP. As a change in the cantonal constitution WILL be necessary for this, a referendum WILL be held.
the essentials in brief
- The decision in the final vote in the Zurich cantonal parliament resulted in 95 votes in favor to 73 against.
The trigger for the proposal was a parliamentary initiative of the GLP.
The template only includes the right to vote at the cantonal and communal level. 16 and 17-year-olds from Zurich can therefore still not be elected to political office.
It was already apparent at the first reading at the beginning of October that the proposal will find a majority in the Cantonal Council. It has not yet been determined when the people of Zurich will be able to vote on voting age 16.
The voting age 16 comes up again and again at the cantonal and federal level. So far, however, all approaches and initiatives have been rejected, with one exception. In 2007, the canton of Glarus reduced its voting age from 18 to 16 years.
At the federal level, the introduction of voting age 16 recently suffered a setback: the National Council’s state political commission barely made an advance at the beginning of November.
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