The question of lowering the voting age to 16 has long been debated in university circles. In Austria, young people aged 16 and older were invited to vote since 2007, even if young people themselves are divided over this issue, even hostile to the idea. Nevertheless, isn’t such a question, which is rarely discussed by the larger public and touches on several dimensions of a person’s life, an ideal topic for a debate, where the confrontation of ideas may change opinions and reveal – or even modify – young people’s global attitudes towards political interest and participation? In 2009, a non-random sample of nearly two hundred 16- to 22-year-old youth in French-speaking Belgium was selected to discuss the possibility of lowering the voting age to 16, as well as political interest and political participation, during one day with four experts. The same questionnaire was filled in at the beginning and at the end of the day to measure the changes in opinion. How an informed discussion changed or confirmed their opinions on the right to vote and on politics in general? Can we draw the same patterns of opinions about politics between the small minority who agreed with the idea (at the end of the day, 22% of the participants thought young people should vote at 16) and the large majority who rejected it? Who were more involved and more interested in politics? Did the mandatory voting in Belgium change anything in their opinions?
