69. Am. U. L. Rev. 1433 (2020).

* Thomas P. Lewis Professor of Law, University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law. Thanks to Chris Bradley, Jan Eichhorn, Tony Gaughan, Andy McLaughlin, Andy Mycock, Carly Muetterties, and Lori Ringhand for comments on drafts of this Article. Thanks also to the University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law and the American Constitution Society for funding this research. Erica Ashton and Zac Losey provided invaluable research assistance. Erica’s work, in particular, infuses every aspect of this Article, and I am grateful to have had such a helpful research assistant by my side.

This Article, prepared for an American University Law Review symposium, explores what the United States can learn from Scotland’s experience in lowering the voting age to sixteen. The minimum voting age in American elections seems firmly entrenched at eighteen, based in part on the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, which prohibits states from denying the right to vote to anyone aged eighteen or older. Yet the conversation about lowering the voting age to sixteen, at least for local elections, has gained steam in recent years. The debate in America, however, is nascent compared to the progress in Scotland, which lowered the voting age to sixteen for its Independence Referendum in 2014 and for all Scottish elections in 2015. Using original research from interviews I conducted in Scotland, this Article offers three main takeaways for American jurisdictions considering this reform: the Scottish experience in lowering the voting age has been mostly successful because advocates (1) went into schools to register students to vote and encourage them to participate; (2) offered meaningful civics education, though that instruction was somewhat uneven across the country; and (3) created a bipartisan coalition of policymakers who supported the change. As the debate on the voting age in the United States expands, advocates should draw upon these lessons from Scotland.