At age 7, my understanding of politics was that the Liberals were the good party because they were apparently going to fix the country and because my dad said so. I knew that the blue bar had to be bigger than the red bar in any given seat (my dad explained to me what seats were and how voting worked, so I kind of knew what was going on). I knew that we were in a Coalition, which I understood to mean that if we won, another party called the Nationals would win as well. Oh, and I knew the ALP (which stood for "Labor Party", or something like that) was evil.
Then there is no way you should have been allowed to vote, firstly because you thought that Liberals were the best option, and secondly it was by indoctrination of overbearingly stupid parents who thought that Liberals were the best option.
You have to wait until you are able to make a rational decision based on knowledge and experience, not by blind adherence.
If you were 7 and your parents said, "Vote for Hitler!", you would have. Therefore, your idea of voting at 7 is total lunacy.
As for reading age, the occasional child may be able to read at 3, but whether they understand what they are reading is debatable. Comprehension comes later. So basically you were a trained monkey.
