So 16 year olds are wise enough to vote, but not fully leave education, buy alcohol, drive a car, join the army and get married without your parents consent, the lists goes on.
There’s no one list. For all the things you mentioned, they are allowed to drive tractors or quads, get married with your parents’ consent, have kids, etc.
Think how weird this would be to someone from the UK a century ago:
"You can have a bisexual orgy on your 16th birthday where someone gets pregnant in celebration of their first time voting, but under no circumstances is the woman allowed to be married until the kid is 15 months old, at which point she can marry another woman. Photographs of the event will, in many jurisdictions, be treated as a criminal offence even though the act itself isn't and those same photos would be fine at 18, which is also now the age when they are no longer subject to a mandatory choice between ongoing education or an apprenticeship."
True, but even if you’re only in Harrogate until you’re 18, you are still signed up until you’re 22, meaning you can be killed on a battlefield aged 18 because of a decision you made when you were 16.
In the context of the discussion on voting, I think the “decision” part is the key point here.
Why do you think you need to have all civil liberties before being allowed to vote? Does it make you a better voter if you can leave school, drink alcohol, drive a car, join the army and get married without your parents consent? This is absurd.
So you're allowed to vote, but you don't need to pay your taxes. You're still considered a child regarding justice law, but considered adult regarding voting?
So basically you're not allowed to camp somewhere without the consent of your parents but you're "suddenly old enough" to judge about some laws?
I think the consensus is missing if voting is permitted by 16, but everything else stays the same.
If you have sufficient income or wealth at 16 you do have to pay taxes. It just happens that most 16 year olds don't have sufficient wealth or income to pay taxes. There is very little difference in terms of duties of a 16 year old and an unemployed adult who does get to vote.
Somewhere one has to draw the line, or you can go down to voting power for toddlers. And the best and obvious line was to treat an adult human as a "full" citizen with all the rights and duties.
So how far down in age would you go and why would you stop at that age?
I'd argue earliest age at which you can be drafted minus maximum term length (ie. 5 years in the UK) sounds good as a general rule. Otherwise people can get drafted by a government they didn't have a say in electing.
I'd also argue that there should be no lower age limit for voting for people with taxable income. No taxation without representation.
> Otherwise people can get drafted by a government they didn't have a say in electing.
This kind of thinking is not rooted in reality. When you were born, you were forced to accept the conditions you were born into. The same is true with laws. I understand that going to war is something else than going to school, but that's life.
> No taxation without representation.
"Representation" in the original slogans context does not really apply here (since it was about voting rights for a taxed population as a whole).
But for the idea of "anyone who has to pay taxes, must also have a say!", I can only say that it comes right back to the previous point: You could just as well argue the individual income tax rate must be zero, until a person had the opportunity to vote at least once. The world doesn't work this way.
When it was the last time we had an actual issue where 16yo voting had direct measurable negative impact on something in real life? I think it's as other said, we have to draw a line, and I think it's reasonable to debate this because maybe each nation prepares their kids differently so one nations 16yo isn't another, this way there isn't a universal rule. But arguing that you have to discuss ALL the other civil liberties before discussing 16yo voting rights is absurd because there is no connection between drinking and voting and all else.
If you have numbers that measure that, it probably will. The closest thing we have is vaccination rates by age group, which shows a lower percentage of younger age groups being vaccinated for covid.