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More than 100,000 enthusiastic 16- and 17-year-olds took part in Scotland’s independence referendum last year, an experiment that proved so successful it spurred legislators this week to permanently lower the voting age by two years for all future local and Scottish parliament elections. The bill received unanimous support in Holyrood, the Scottish parliament.

By lowering its voting age, Scotland joins a small but growing club of nations that includes Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador and Nicaragua.

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tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Ishmael N. Daro: Want to improve Canadian democracy? Lower the voting age to 16 Back to video

Canada should consider a membership.

This is, after all, a week in which we’re considering all sorts of big democratic changes. Both the federal NDP and Liberals are now on record wanting to replace the first-past-the-post system with something better, with ideas for mandatory voting and online ballots also being bandied about. But those proposals, as interesting as they are, only look at how we vote, ignoring the question of who gets to exercise the franchise. If the aim of any electoral reform is to make Canadian democracy fairer and more inclusive, dropping the voting age to 16 is the next step.