On the voting age, I think if we started imposing tests on maturity and knowledge, there are a lot of 18-year-olds and 25-year-olds and 40-year-olds and 50-year-olds who wouldn't qualify either. I remember as a kid being very frustrated with adults I would meet who knew way less than I did and followed politics far less than I did. To me, I think the idea of voting age has to be tied to rights and responsibilities of citizenship, and at 18, in particular, you start paying taxes. That's a pretty obligation that kicks in. Then there's the idea of no taxation without representation. There's something to that, right? To me I think it needs to be tied to those responsibilities. A city councillor in Lethbridge actually brought forward a motion to the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association to lower the voting age to 16 at the municipal level, because that actually isn't an issue at the municipal level. Because we have property tax, it's a different issue at the municipal level.
As far as compulsory voting is concerned, I'm certainly not as strongly opposed to it as Professor Dufour is. I would be opposed to actually making people vote; but as for making people show up at the polls, I'm at least somewhat receptive to that idea. I think the idea of actually forcing them to put an X beside somebody's name and thereby maybe contributing to the election of somebody they oppose is, under no circumstances, acceptable.
Fixing low voter turnout is incredibly complicated. The causes are generational. They are based on short-term factors. There are so many things. It's the magic bullet solution. As for fixing it any other way, I'm at a loss. I've spent a lot of time looking at the research and teaching on this. There isn't a magic bullet solution other than mandatory voting.