Legal experts and youth advocacy groups today issued a letter suggesting that the law be amended to lower the voting age to 18, thereby bypassing the high threshold for amending the Constitution.
Article 130 of the Constitution states that citizens must be at least 20 years of age to vote.
However, to avoid the need to pass a constitutional amendment, which has a high threshold for passage, legislators across party lines have proposed amending the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法) and Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Act (總統副總統選舉罷免法).
Photo: CNA
For a constitutional amendment to pass, it must first clear the legislature with a supermajority, after which more than half of all eligible voters in the country must vote in its favor.
In a public hearing at the Legislative Yuan’s Internal Administration Committee on April 22, opinions differed on the strategy of amending the two laws.
Some experts said that it would be unconstitutional, while others suggested that a constitutional interpretation may be a more feasible approach.
Groups including the Taiwan Engagement Association for Youth, EdYouth and Better Together for NextGen Taiwan today released a statement signed by more than 10 public law experts calling for direct legal amendments.
Amending the law would provide space for a constitutional interpretation, the letter said.
There is already a high degree of bipartisan consensus on the issue, it said.
In a 2022 constitutional referendum on the issue, 53 percent of ballots cast were in favor.
However, with voter turnout of just 59 percent, the measure failed to meet the strict threshold requiring approval from more than half of all eligible voters.
While the referendum failed due to the high threshold, it still shows a high degree of consensus among legislators and the public, the letter said.
Young people play a key role in the nation’s future, Soochow University School of Law associate professor Kung Wen-hsiang (宮文祥) said, adding that allowing 18-year-olds to vote would strengthen Taiwan’s democratic society.
The Constitution set a voting age of 20 at a time when the legal age of adulthood was still 20, Hsuan Chuang University assistant professor of law Chiou Tzu-yu (邱子宇) said.
The Civil Code has since been amended to lower the age to 18, he said, adding that the voting age should therefore also be lowered as well to grant this cohort their constitutionally recognized right.
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