When there’s something that need be decided in my children’s kindergarten everybody gets to vote – one vote per child. I as their guardian naturally get to decide what to do with the vote. However the kindergarten isn’t strictly a democracy though they like to pretend. My country is though (or at least it has such pretensions), oughtn’t children have votes too – to be handled by their guardian till they come of age? They have as much interest as anyone, more so in many respects, to see things are handled in the best way.
I have no particular objection to children voting, although the automatic passing of such a vote to the parent is more contentious: which parent gets to have their vote effectively doubled? And if a child is a moral agent, then is a chimp, or even a dog, and can I increase my vote many times by owning a large kennels?
But, in principle, I don’t mind: participation in democracy is a lesson which can be initiated at any age.
Well, there’s a long established principle to having many ‘rights’ in democracies held in abeyance until the rights-holder is determined to be mature enough to handle the right responsibly.
Driving.
Drinking.
Sex.
Military Service.
Entering into contracts.
I would postulate that voting is one of these self-same rights that are held until a determined ‘age of majority’.
And adding votes to a family just for extra births…doesn’t that provide a perverse incentive for people to have children whether or not they could afford or even WANT them?
No thanks!
I don’t think any of those rights Jonathan Chance listed can compare with voting. For me the franchise is a much more basic right. Still, I think he has a point about maturity. I’m OK with enfranchising young people so long as they can vote for themselves. A kindergartener would presumably vote for whoever their parents instructed them to unless they were feeling willful that day or the ballot was complicated. Giving breeders extra votes is NOT democratic. I don’t think a child’s judgement matters so much as their independence. Hell, we don’t disenfranchise people for having the poor judgement to vote Republican/Democrat/Insert Your Own Screwball Party Here.
Rune -
When your children’s kindergarden class gets to vote, what are they voting on? Which book to have read to them, or which telephone company the school should use? What flavor of juice to have, or which teachers should be hired?
I’m guessing that there are major limits placed on which decisions are being voted on. And there should be. A kindergardener doesn’t have the information necessary to pick a telephone provider, a teacher, or a president. By extending the vote to everyone, all we would be doing (for MOST children) is giving their parents a second/third/fourth vote. In the US at least, we don’t allow one person to cast the vote of another, either directly (vote held in trust by a parent) or indirectly (Mommy says check the purple box.) Until we decide to put into place a compatency test before voting, we will have to go with an age cut off.
Perhaps the practical problem with which guardian should be entrusted with the child’s votes can be solved by giving everybody (not just umm… breeders umm…) two votes, or ten votes – the guardians could then share the responsibility of voting on behalf of the child by dividing the child’s votes equally between them.
A moral agent? What is a moral agent? We are not given votes based on our morality or sentience (if for no other reason than both are impossible to prove), but on basis of our humanity. When we decide to increase deficit spending and lending, or decrease school funds etc. we make decisions that will have a large impact on the children’s lives, today or in the future. Yet the child is not given any say in the matter what so ever. Perhaps parents can not be trusted to act in the (by them perceived) best interest of their children, even when entrusted with their votes, but it seems to me it’s the only bet they’ve got. Or perhaps one could contemplate an ombudsman for children and future generations – but that would be even less democratic.
One would have to be exceptionally political interested to have children for the purpose of voting, I don’t think that’s much of a realistic worry. The only “rights” you listed I find somewhat comparable is “Entering into contracts”. None of the others seem to have any impact on the children (whether I drive or have sex will not matter to my child in 15 years). And parents can enter into contract on behalf of their children.
Tastes of Chocolate
I meant it to be so the children’s guardian (parents) voted on behalf of their children, like guardians make all other legal decisions on behalf of their children. Hopefully they would have the best interest of the children in mind when voting and increasingly involving them in the process as they grow older, but of course this can not be guaranteed.
Er… wouldn’t giving everyone two votes just cancel everything out?
I agree that children shouldn’t vote, because it gives an unfair advantage to people with kids (unless you give everyone two votes, which just seems… well… pointless). Childfree people are discriminated against enough in this society, why make it worse? Though I do like the idea of a competency test. I think that if someone can’t locate the US on a map, name the three branches of government, or name certain landmark presidents (first prez, prez during Civil War, etc), they shouldn’t be voting. Then again, I can see why a certain ruling political party wouldn’t want to require such a test, seeing as how they’d lose a good chunk of their base. 
Not at all. It has been argued that giving several votes to everybody would help make the election more fair even without the children element, as it perhaps could better reflect the real sentiments of the voters, get away from the either/or of the current system and reduce strategic voting. Perhaps your confusion is that you think all votes must be cast on different candidates. In such a system one could choose to cast several/all votes on one candidate.
And I hardly agree that childless (if you can use “breeders” I can use “childless” heh heh) people are discriminated against. Also I’m very opposed to competence test in elections. The idea is not to reduce the enfranchised base but enlarge it – as has been the trend from the start of democracy (landed upper class men over 35 -> all men -> women too -> 18 years).
No, I was thinking about what would happen if everyone used their votes on the same candidate. If everyone voted for the same person for both slots, then the vote still comes out 49% to 51% or whatever.
And such a system (allowing people to vote twice for the same person or vote for two different people) would, in the current political climate, benefit conservatives. There are not as many right-wing third party voters as there are left-wing TPVs. There are probably more people who would choose to vote for a Democrat and a Green than a Republican and a Libertarian. (Assuming that the people who would vote both Dem and Pub would cancel themselves out, because they would.) The only way it could possibly be made fair is if you mandated that everyone vote for two different candidates, and even then… I’d like to look at the math of the person who originally thought this was a good idea, because I don’t see any point to it at all.
Property taxes? FCC regulations made “for the children”? Child tax credits? Parents get all sorts of perks that childfree (and I use that word to mean a willful lack of children) people don’t get. Now, I pay property taxes without protest, since I think funding education is important for everyone in society, but you gotta admit that it does benefit the people with kids just a bit more.
It seems you’d only consider it more fair if it would help your personal favourite candidate get elected. Anyway I’m not interested in US politics. I was talking on principle. If somebody had ten votes, he could say: I like candidate X very much but I also like candidate Y a bit, candidate Z sucks. I’ll give X 7 votes, Y 3 votes and Z none. As it is now, he’s forced to give 100% of his votes to just one of them – even though that is not at all how he feel about the matter. Personally I don’t think it would be better than the existing system, I think people would just give all their votes to the candidate they liked and considered most likely to win. I can’t see how it could be worse. There is a Wired article that lists and analyse a number of different election systems – I’ll see if I can dig it up, if you want.
You mean it benefits kids more. Some does. Other favour childless/childfree (MS Word doesn’t know that word – you should picket them!). Such as the system whereby old/retired childfree persons gets to profit from the work of young people even though they’ve never participated in the immense work raising children also is. Anyway that’s another discussion.
I didn’t notice your location until now. Yes, maybe this would make sense in a country with many equally popular political parties where the popular vote actually determines anything at all. However, it would not work in the US, because of our very flawed but somehow still extant electoral system. We have a two-party system written into our Constitution. So of course, things work differently here, and giving everyone two votes wouldn’t work.
How old should a child be before it gets this vote? Should a two-week and old baby get the right to choose? It could grab either the parent’s right hand or left hand to pick. The newborn has a vested interest in it’s environment too. If the priviledge to vote should begin at age five, then you have just established another arbitrary age of majority. That does not make any more sense that what is already in place.
At birth or any time thereafter when the parents has it registered. And again, I’m not talking about four year old making voting decisions on their own. Like all other legal decisions the child’s guardian (parents) would take it upon themselves to make these decisions on behalf of the child until it comes of age (18). Hopefully they would have the best interest of the child in mind when voting and increasingly involve it in the process as it grow older, but of course this can not be guaranteed.
If the four year old isn’t the one making the decision then he or she isn’t the one with the vote. In effect you would simply be giving the parent(s) multiple votes against my single vote which hardly seems fair. I feel no overriding desire to permit children the right to vote.
Marc
I and my parents have decidedly different political views, and we have had since before I could vote. So my parents voting for me (say when I was age 16) would NOT have been a true indication of what I wanted, but only an extension of how they wanted to vote.
I don’t see that this would benefit the child at all. I (as any ex-16 year old) wouldn’t have the input I wanted. It seems to come back to parents with more kids getting more votes.