“Not just for adults”: These two are suing for the right to vote from 16

Jonathan Faust and Tom Kewald are politically active and have a clear opinion. They are still not allowed to vote, not even in the local elections: At 17, they are both too young. They are filing a lawsuit against this and want to enforce the right to vote from the age of 16.

It is a common prejudice among adults that young people are disenchanted with politics, apolitical and often naive. It may only seem logical that they are only allowed to vote in Hesse from the age of 18. Two 17-year-olds do not want to accept that: Jonathan Faust and Tom Kewald file a lawsuit in the administrative courts of Kassel and Gießen on Thursday.

“Elections shouldn’t just be for adults,” says Jonathan Faust. He is involved in Fridays for Future, is the school speaker and sits on the Kassel Climate Protection Council. “I found it extremely unfair that I was not allowed to vote,” he criticizes, although he is so involved in city politics, is interested in many topics and has an opinion.

Commitment to the future

Children and young people are taught that politics is only for adults: “On the morning of their 18th birthday, they should flip a switch, but that doesn’t work,” says Faust. Tom Kewald sees it similarly. He and many of his classmates were annoyed not to be allowed to vote.

It is disappointing because issues such as climate change and demographic change will ultimately affect his generation and many are politically active. Kewald says that if children and young people in schools are prepared for politics and elections and are allowed to have a say, then the political disaffection is not so great.

Are young people fit enough to vote?

The Hessian state parliament conducts a non-representative survey for young people on its topic Website: “Are you in favor of lowering the voting age at the state level?” The result is clear: over 70 percent are in favor, around 23 percent are against and around 5 percent cannot decide (as of 07/07/2021).

As a possible argument against voting from the age of 16, the page cites: “16-year-olds are often still naive and trust the statements of parties or candidates too much” – they lack the necessary skepticism about what politicians are saying . But is that also true?

A question of maturity

The question of whether young people are able to weigh up before they give their vote to a party is central to the question of whether it is constitutional that children and young people have no right to vote, says the constitutional lawyer Hermann Heussner, professor for Public law at the Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences. Heussner prepared the lawsuit together with Faust and Kewald, supported by the association “Mehr Demokratie” and its campaign “Jugend W Wahl”. Even before the local elections in March, the association asked the Hessian state parliament to lower the voting age – unsuccessfully.

There is no evidence to support the thesis that 16- and 17-year-olds do not have the necessary maturity to vote, says Heussner. Beyond Hesse, they are apparently considered mature enough: in eleven federal states there is already a right to vote from 16 in local elections, in three of them young people are also allowed to participate in the state elections.

Model lawsuits for the right to vote from 16

With the lawsuit in Hesse you have to go through the administrative courts to challenge the current regulation, says Heussner: Because the Hessian constitution says nothing about the fact that 16-year-olds are not allowed to vote in local elections – that is in Hessian municipalities and Landkreisordnung established.

The two lawsuits are model lawsuits in this respect – the aim is to examine whether the limitation of the voting age to 18 years is unconstitutional. Jonathan Faust therefore wants to challenge the election of the Kassel city council, Tom Kewald the mayor election of Marburg.

Elections would have to be repeated

If the lawsuits were successful, the elections would have to be repeated – but only the two elections in Kassel and Marburg, against which an explicit complaint was made. Apart from other cities, there are other plaintiffs.

If, however, it were legally recognized that 16- and 17-year-olds are quite able to have an opinion politically and also to cast a vote, the voting age would have to be lowered in Hesse, says constitutional lawyer Heussner. And that could also play a role in state elections in the future.