The city council in Paris let 16-year-olds vote when they wanted to ban cars in the city. Now the ban is a reality, even though 16-year-olds are not allowed to drive.
People as young as 16 have helped throw cars out of the French capital, Paris. The city government unusually gave young people a vote.
This is reported by BFM TV .
Last Sunday, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo let the very young, who are not allowed to drive at all, vote on whether cars should be banned in Paris.
And now the ban is a reality, even though 16-year-olds are not usually allowed to vote in these types of elections in the city.
But the mayor, who is already known to be opposed to any form of private transportation, has changed his mind.
– The participation of young people is crucial for the survival of democracy, and that is why I am allowing everyone from the age of 16 to vote in the elections, says Anne Hidalgo.
16-year-olds are not allowed to drive at all – critics call the result cheating
Specifically, the vote means that the Paris city government will now have the opportunity to ban cars from 500 of the city's streets.
Critics, however, believe that the election result is pure fraud. By lowering the voting age to just 16, the mayor has gained even more supporters of her own views.
When the votes were counted, 66 percent of Parisians – that is, of those who bothered to vote – said yes to a car ban in the city. Now the ban only needs to be formally approved.
But there's not much substance to the vote, if you ask the critics. Only 3.9 percent of the citizens of Paris even bothered to vote.
Former deputy mayor Patrick Bloche was not slow to comment on the election results.
"This means that approximately 10,000 parking spaces will disappear from the city," he writes in a post on social media.
The protest movement Change Paris is also in no doubt that Anne Hidalgo is on her way out of the mayor's office and thus out of power in the French capital with the vote.
