High school students reluctant to have voting rights at 18: poll

High school students are relatively reluctant to be able to vote at age 18, according to a recent survey.

The survey was conducted in July by the publisher of Koukousei-Sinbun, a monthly newspaper for high school students, on 3,628 students enrolled at 36 schools nationwide. The survey comes at a time when the government is studying whether to lower the legal age of adulthood to 18 from 20.

According to the survey, 32 percent of the students oppose having legal voting rights at 18 while 20 percent support it.

Of the rest, however, 39 percent did not give clear answers, 6 percent said they were unaware of the issue of lowering the voting age, and 3 percent didn't answer, the survey said.

By gender, males favored a lower voting age more than females by a tally of 25 percent to 16 percent, while 30 percent of males and 34 percent of females did not.

Last year, the Diet enacted a law for laying out the procedures for holding a referendum on amending the Constitution. Included in the law is a stipulation giving Japanese citizens 18 or older the right to vote in such a referendum.

The law also stipulates that the legal age of adulthood under the Civil Code and the voting age in the election law shall remain 20 until it is revised. The law comes into force in 2010.

In February this year, then Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama asked the Legislative Council to deliberate the idea of lowering of legal age to 18 from 20.

Asked if they would go to the polls upon reaching legal voting age, 73 percent of the respondents said yes and 24 percent said no.

The survey also touched on other issues, such as whether to abolish capital punishment. According to the results, 47 percent were opposed to abolishing capital punishment and 12 percent were in favor of it.

By gender, 51 percent of male and 45 percent of female students opposed abolishing the death penalty, while 15 percent of males and 9 percent of females backed abolition.

"I think the results reflect the fact that there currently are only a limited number of teachers who discuss political and social issues in classrooms," said Kentaro Nishi, the newspaper's chief editor.