Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Expand the Franchise to Children?
While researching a paper on the effects of social security on fertility rates a few years ago, I stumbled upon the concept of Demeny Voting, an intriguing idea to mitigate the tendency to neglect the long-term interests of citizens who have not come of age. Popularized by demographer Paul Demeny in the 1980s, it argues that the comparative political power of older voters should be weakened by giving each parent of a minor the exercise of an additional half a vote.
This kind of proxy-voting has since gained a few advocates in power, though they are still few and far between. In Germany, the Kinderwahlrecht has been suggested by the classically liberal Free Democrats and backed by some Social Democrats and Greens. In recent years, Economists in Canada, Japan, and Austria have endorsed the proposal, but its champions are — needless to say — far from achieving the critical mass necessary for constitutional amendments in their respective countries.
I recently asked my uncle, an economist in New Zealand, for his views. He maintained that, if implemented in New Zealand, Demeny Voting would increase the electoral power of the left-of-centre Labour Party, since larger families tend to be the Labour-voting Polynesians. Although I will cast my vote for the right-of-centre National Party at this month’s general election, I’ll be voting against my interests in this regard: it is Labour who favors raising retirement benefit eligibility from age 65 to 67, while the National-led government has stuck firmly by its promise to keep it in place, presumably for fear of upsetting the powerful elderly voting block. As my own vote shows, it’s far from clear whether child proxy-voting would improve policy-making overall.
All of this leaves aside a very important question: how do you convince the current electorate to sanction a fundamental reshuffling of power that would result in policy changes that they are not currently willing to back?
The problem of fiscal sustainability — or the lack thereof — is much more pressing in the U.S. than it is in New Zealand and is unlikely to be solved anytime soon. While we can’t expect two-thirds of today’s Congress and three-fourths of the States to “give children the vote,” what do you, the grassroots of American conservativism, think of the idea? Is it politically feasible in the long term, and how would it change politics in America?
Image Credit: Flickr user Amir G.
Published in General
Your idea with regards to changing the balance of power in regards to the franchise… I find it intriguing. It seems a variation of tying voting rights to property ownership, giving more power to those with “skin in the game” as it were.
[EDITOR: This comment originally referred to a phrase in the OP that has since been revised; that section has been removed solely for clarity.]
Older voters (I am one) do some damage, but if Demeny voting were put in place here, I suspect that we would quickly have government daycare and mandated paid parental leave, and that’s just a start. Politicians who want to make changes to, say, the retirement age, need to convince young people that it is in their interest to support such policies so that they vote in greater numbers, and there is no reason why already-retired Americans would not generally support more reasonable retirement ages. That would require courageous and clever leadership, a rare commodity, so weighted voting looks attractive, but I think it would backfire as young and old are pitted against each other, to say nothing of large families against small families. I can just see the Left proposing that people with more than one or two children forfeit votes.
Fiddlesticks.
Better to remove the age restriction completely but also impose a new requirement that only those who pay more in tax than they receive in benefits/salary/contracts/subsidies/etc are eligible.
Dreamer!
I agree, older voters aren’t, or shouldn’t be, a barrier to pension reform, as any reforms being proposed would be implemented so gradually as to leave current retirees unaffected. The question is to which degree the interests of soon-to-be retirees conflict with the interests of the children they are parents to, especially in light of weakening family ties.
Yes, government day care and mandated paid parental leave could result. Such programs are already rife in Austria (where I live) and other European countries, justified as a measure to encourage higher birth rates, which simply has not followed. Expanding the child tax credit, as Ramesh Ponnuru avocates, is a reform that would recognize that the offspring of large families will pay a big share of future social security checks and is more likely to gain the support of Demeny voters than merely more state programs for young parents. I don’t see a way around pitting large families against small families, particularly the childless type (with 2 kids you’re already above average these days). The unsustainable status quo has the childless free-riding on those who rear children.
I’m an older voter (63). I long for the day a group of politicians will say, “You guys are out of luck. We’re raising the retirement age to 70. If you were planning on retiring at 65, make new plans.” Or even 75, for non-manual laborers. We HAVE to fix social security and medicare. Raising the retirement age seems to me to be the easiest way to fix them. Fixing medicaid is important, too, but I don’t see as easy a fix.
All of this leaves aside a very important question: how do you convince the current electorate to sanction a fundamental reshuffling of power that would result in policy changes that they are not currently willing to back?
You don’t, but Randy Webster at comment #6 made an excellent suggestion to raise retirement age to 70. That is a doable alternative with little or no ‘negative’ repercussions.
As an aside, I noticed from your profile you’re from Wien. Oh my; do you have Viel Glück! :)
So welfare recipients with ten children get ten more votes to take money out of my pocket to give themselves more subsidies.
No thank you.
The parents of the many large families that I know of are incredibly hard working people who raise upstanding members of society, who will one day be financing the social security checks of the childless. Who is doing the freeloading here?
In 2012, Paul Ryan proposed gradually raising the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 67 over the course of two decades, and he faced considerable backlash. Let’s hope the political climate is more receptive to at least some Social Security and Medicare reforms come January 2017. It might take a debt crisis to force America’s hand, however.
And yes, Wien ist wunderschön!
Ask illegal immigrant supporters.
What, too soon!? :)
President Duggar?
People who have large families–like the Duggars–tend to be conservative. So there’s that. But are parents more likely to vote for the long-term interests of their children or themselves? These aren’t quite the same.
Despite the Tea Party movement, most Americans are still generally content with the status quo and blissfully ignorant of future challenges. There is no correction in the wind.
You’re both right. That voting amendment could both help and hurt. But in a popular democracy like ours everything gets corrupted by campaign manipulations. Republicans and Democrats alike would offer whatever would buy them votes. That means subsidies for both welfare queens and responsible families.
Why don’t more Republicans favor elimination of the national income tax? Because the income tax is the perfect mechanism for buying votes and keeping money flowing to their pet projects.
This proposal strikes me as ironic. Since we moved to universal suffrage, education and experience are no longer prerequisites for voting. Nor does a voter need to pay into the system, as Misthiocracy suggests in comment #3. Yet we don’t allow teenagers to vote. Why? Because they lack education, experience, and self-sufficiency. But we are willing to consider giving their votes to their parents.
One’s children certainly qualify as skin in the game, but so don’t many others circumstances, like owning a business. Wouldn’t this be opening the floodgates to other calls for “elite” voting powers?
Ah, but how long would large families remain conservative if they received a vote for every child? That would create a political incentive for freeloaders to have more children. Add the impending federal recognition of polygamous marriage (it’s coming sooner-or-later) and the problem multiplies even further.
And the parents of welfare recipients too often aren’t hard working, responsible people who raise upstanding members of society.
They often “raise” dysfunctional people unable to take care of themselves, let alone subsidize anyone else, while requiring endless public support merely to eat.
I’m sorry if that harsh, but that’s the reality, and I have absolutely no desire to give them any more of an incentive to have yet more children they can’t pay for, but will certainly demand I pay for.
That’s who the freeloaders are.
I should add, also, that often those childless people are high income professionals who’ve paid a lot in taxes, which is what pays for social security.
So I think it’s unfair to call them freeloaders.
I couldn’t agree more with this observation. I chose not to have children because as the daughter of two of the greatest of The Greatest Generation, I was all too respectful of the sacrifices necessary to raise functioning and productive children. I wasn’t willing to make this choice and I surely wish others would take into account that taxpayers are not in the mood to fund your children’s college debt.
You can’t afford to pay for your children’s education? Don’t have them then because I’m personally sick and tired of listening to Millenials whine about their college debt. I’ve been paying for my parents social security and medicare for decades but at least they didn’t leave me holding the bag for a $100k education. My father paid for two kids to go to expensive private universities and never complained for one minute.
Repeal the 26th Amendment.