At its policy forum last weekend, Labour joined all the other mainstream British political parties in committing to lowering the franchise to 16 in its next election manifesto.
All to the good you might think. Surely fostering young people's civic engagement is what all of us are aiming to do? But I have always had serious concerns about this proposal.
Politicos of all colours believe that the way to switch young people on to civic and civil engagement is through voting and formal political structures. This is because these same structures were what got them involved back in the day. But the vast majority of young people (and indeed the population in general) are switched off by the existing structures and choose to engage in different ways (volunteering and single issue campaigns are both extremely popular with the 16-25 age group).
Introducing votes at 16 merely addresses the symptoms of political engagement, not the cause. And it is also guaranteed to fail - every survey that has ever been done of under 18s demonstrates conclusively that they don't want the vote. Similar 'eye catching' initiatives like entering people into a lottery if they vote in local elections suffer from the same misconception.
What we need to do is to look more fundamentally at why people aren't interested in mainstream politics anymore. The 2006 Power Inquiry provided an excellent roadmap for how this trend should be reversed, but now seems to have been largely forgotten. We need to start with 'civil' engagement and gradually introduce people to the concept of 'civic' engagement. There is no doubt that the former can lead to the latter, if correctly nurtured.
Votes at 16 will merely extend the reach of our political class, one of the main causes of disengagement and cynicism, to a younger age group.
PS Michael White wrote a very entertaining article on this in The Guardian earlier this week which has stimulated much impassioned blog debate.