No. Science and Society define the stages of life and 16-year-olds are not adults yet, with all the same responsibilities, priviledges & rights.

It is widely recognized by science and society that there are defined stages in the life of every individual, which overall, apply to the majority of the population. There may be some (rare) exceptions, such as the 13-year-old that is so brilliant they are enrolled in college, but even in such cases, certainly 13-year-olds are not fully mature in other ways. Sixteen-year-olds, lacking the experience and knowledge of fully mature adults, are susceptible to believing in ideas that they have not been able to test the validity of through experience, or by gaining enough neccessary knowledge about the ideas presented that they lack the ability to be able to apply any real sense of discernment about those ideas. It takes time and maturity to become a fully-informed adult capable of weighing the pros and cons of ideas to come to reasonable and responsible decisions. Sixteen-year-olds, at their stage in life, are dealing with issues that adults, for the most part, have already had experience with - growing bodies, peer acceptance/rejection, relationships with the opposite sex, getting a basic education, thinking about what they are going to do for a future career , etc.. Their time is occupied with these new (to them) and neccessary things - there is time enough for them to worry about voting. They should be interested in things such as politics and issues our country faces, but they are still in a learning stage. To allow them to vote before they are fully developed adults is folly. Politicians that are behind the idea of allowing 16-year-olds to vote are simply hoping to take advantage of their lack of knowledge and experience. To more fully drive home my point that sixteen-year-olds are not mature enough to vote, I offer the following article from the website "Live Science" concerning the development of the human brain: At an age when Americans are first considered adults, their brains are still maturing, a new study suggests. Researchers at Dartmouth College scanned the brains of nineteen 18-year-old students who had moved more than 100 miles to attend school. "During the first year of college, students have many new experiences," said psychologist Abigail Baird, the study's principal investigator. "They are faced with new cognitive, social, and emotional challenges." A group of 17 older students, ranging in age from 25 to 35, served as a control group for comparison. The results showed that the freshmen students' brains underwent significant changes and were very different from that of the older adults. The researchers believe the changes represent an increased awareness of the students' inner feelings and an improved ability to organize and integrate incoming sensory information; this synthesis helps shape the kinds of emotional and behavioral responses they have to new experiences. The results are consistent with other research suggesting that the human brain continues to grow and mature right up to the point when we become adults and even beyond. In another study, researchers found that humans don't really develop the ability to handle multiple pieces of information at once until about the ages of 16 or 17. "The brain of an 18-year-old college freshman is still far from resembling the brain of someone in their mid-twenties," said Craig Bennett, a graduate student who was involved in the new research. "When do we reach adulthood? It might be much later than we traditionally think."