Ed Miliband should recognise that 16 and 17 year olds can be part of our democracy even if they do not have the vote

Ed Miliband has recently backed a call from Democratic Audit and a range of youth organisations to lower the voting age in the UK to 16. In this post, the latest in our series on youth participation in democracy, Andy Mycock and Jonathan Tonge make the point that votes at 16 will not be a panacea to the problem of youth disengagement, and suggest we need wider reform of a political system that has become increasingly insular, self-selecting, and unrepresentative.