Larijani: We are striving to raise the voting age for the Assembly of Experts to 18 years

While in June the Iranian Parliament announced that the voting age of 15 years would not change for the upcoming elections, the Speaker of Parliament now states that efforts are underway to raise the voting age for the Assembly of Experts to 18 years. According to the official Iranian news agency, IRNA, Ali Larijani stated to reporters on the night of August 25 in Mashhad, "Efforts are being made to coordinate with the Assembly of Experts and, if agreed upon, to raise the voting age [from 15] to 18 years." The reason for the change in the voting age has been attributed to the simultaneous holding of the midterm elections for the Assembly of Experts and the Islamic Consultative Assembly in the coming months. The voting age for representatives of the Islamic Consultative Assembly in Iran is 18 years. Just two months prior, in June, the spokesperson for the Committee on Councils and Internal Affairs of the Iranian Parliament stated that the election law for the two assemblies had been approved, but the voting age for the upcoming elections would remain "unchanged at 15 years old." The Iranian Parliament's news agency did not clarify whether this age applies to voting for both assemblies or just the Assembly of Experts, quoting Abbas Zare'zadeh Mehrizi, the spokesperson for the Internal Affairs Committee. However, on August 19, it was announced that the voting age for "both elections" was considered to be 15 years old. The increase and decrease of the voting age in Iranian elections has a history. For instance, in 2007, the presiding board of the Assembly of Experts announced that the voting age for the midterm elections of this assembly would be raised to 18 years. That election was also held in some provinces of Iran in March, simultaneously with the elections for the eighth Islamic Consultative Assembly. A year prior, the Iranian Parliament had voted to raise the voting age in council elections.