The Canadian Green Party didn't win a single seat in yesterday's election, but Green Party leader Elizabeth May made a very interesting comment:
"It's obviously a disappointment," she told reporters before heading off to console her own supporters with an upbeat speech. "We ran an exuberant and joyful campaign. If kids five years and up could have voted, I would have won by a landslide," declared Ms. May, who lost by several thousand votes.
May probably didn't mean to seriously suggest that children should have the right to vote. But I'm not convinced that it would be such a terrible idea. The main objection to giving children the vote is that they lack the knowledge to make informed choices. Of course the same is true of most of the adult electorate, who are rationally ignorant about politics and public policy, and often don't know even very basic facts. Nonetheless, it's probably true that the average child knows a lot less about politics than the average adult, and that may be a good reason to deny most children the franchise. But why deny it to all of them? If a minor can pass a test of basic political knowledge (say, the political knowledge equivalent of the citizenship test administered to immigrants seeking naturalization), why shouldn't he or she have the right to vote? Such a precocious child-voter would probably be more knowledgeable than the majority of the adult population. Giving her the right to vote would actually increase the average knowledge level of the electorate and thereby slightly improve the quality of political decision-making. I've met twelve-year-olds with far higher levels of political knowledge than that of the average adult. You probably have too.
Once the knowledge objection is off the table, all the arguments for giving adults the right to vote also apply to sufficiently knowledgeable children. Like the adults, children have a claim to the franchise because government policies affect them too, because otherwise their interests might be undervalued in the political process, because it affirms their status as citizens with equal rights, and so on.
Obviously, there might be some difficult administrative issues. For example, we might not trust the government to put together an adequate knowledge test. But I don't see any principled reason to deny the franchise to children whose political knowledge is greater than that of most adult voters.
Some people might worry that even knowledgeable child-voters will be "unduly" influenced by their parents' preferences. Given the existence of the secret ballot, I doubt that this would be a major problem. Moreover, children who are knowledgeable enough to pass the test and interested enough to take it will probably have at least some political ideas of their own that aren't easily susceptible to parental suasion. In any event, I'm not sure that the possibility of parental persuasion would necessarily be a bad thing. The objection is in fact similar to one of the arguments once raised against giving women the right to vote - that they would be unduly influenced by their husbands or fathers. Husbands will often influence the views of their wives (and vice versa); similarly, parents will influence those of their children. That doesn't by itself justify denying either married people or children the right to vote.
UPDATE: Some commenters note that children might lack maturity or life experience, as well as knowledge. Obviously they do lack it. I'm just not convinced that either is tremendously useful for voting. Most voting decisions have to do with complex, large-scale policy issues that can't easily be weighed based on personal experience. Realistically, even most adults have little life experience that is directly useful in assessing difficult policy issues. I discuss the limited utility of personal life experience to voting decisions in this paper (pp. 9-10). At the very least, it seems to me that superior knowledge might well outweigh inferior maturity and life experience. And I'm only advocating giving the franchise to children who can demonstrate knowledge levels superior to those of the average adult voter.
UPDATE #2: Various commenters cite the value for voting of such "adult" experiences as holding a job, paying taxes, owning property, and so on. For reasons noted in the first update, I'm skeptical that these experiences greatly improve the quality of voting decisions. Even more to the point, however, we don't exclude from the franchise the many adults who lack some or all of these experiences - even if they are also ignorant of even the most basic political knowledge. If lack of life experience is not enough to justify exclusion of even the most ignorant adults from the franchise, I don't see why it should be considered sufficient to exclude vastly more knowledgeable minors.
UPDATE #3: For a more thoroughgoing argument for giving children the vote (in this case all children), see here. I disagree with some of the points, but the author does do a good job of knocking down some of the standard arguments against letting minors vote.
Even a child who has raw political knowledge doesn't necessarily understand the real world implications of many things. Children have never paid taxes or worked for a living or paid a medical bill or invested money.
In short, they typically don't make adult decisions and don't typically experience adult consequences. All of these things generally inform policital decision making, even for rationally ignorant adults. Rationally ignorant adults may not spend the time to learn political facts, but they cannot help but have life experience and a level of maturity children simply don't have.
Dan Schmutter
Is it? No concerns about emotional or psychological maturity? Life experience? Nothing else?
Do we deny children the right to drive, or drink alcohol, or have sex, or own guns, because of their lack of knowledge about certain subjects? Or is there more to it?
Sk
I was only advocating the test for minors.
My senior year in HS, I told my father that I was going to a X rated movie with my friends. After some argueing I told him "I'm an American and I have rights." He looked me dead in the eye and said "until you get a job, put a roof over your head and pay taxes, the only rights you have are what you have earned from me." There is a lot of wisdom in those words.
They might have won if they spoke to the adults in the room.
I started working and paying taxes at age 14. I watched my money get funneled into FICA, state taxes, and federal taxes, with nary a chance to express my feelings about how it was spent at the voting booth.
I agree with your sentiment that children who've never had to pay taxes shouldn't get to vote, as long as you require the same of adults. How is it fair that a productive 17-year-old gets no say in how his tax money is spent, but a 30-year-old welfare queen who's never worked a day in her life gets to decide how to decide how the 17-year-old's money is spent?
And unlike women, blacks, and non-property holders, no one's suggesting having kids invest, work, pay medical bills, pay taxes, or otherwise be included in the fullness of adult responsibilities and privileges, as many did, eventually successfully, for the other groups.
These would be voters who by law cannot work, and by experience overwhelmingly do not know the value of labor and a dollar, no matter how bright. I don't favor a return to property qualifications as the determinant of the franchise, but this is a bit much.
That's one question.
The other is this: assume that the number of children voting will be enough to impact the election. Assume, also, that the knowledge required for being an informed voter is not fixed. Thus, the test would only make sense if it could be modified over time. But who would modify it? And how could you avoid creating massive interest groups trying to influence the content of the test?
Consider this presidential election. From my perspective, knowledge about the irreconcilable wing of Islam is one of the most important factors in making a decision. Another important bit of knowledge is whether the Great Depression was prolonged or made easier by the New Deal.
And that's without discussing the other points:
"I would be MUCH more concerned with children being influenced by their teachers' ideology than their parents."
ME TOO! Let's just give the government even more reason to ideologically slant the material in school (as if they didn't have enough already). Let's also put more votes in the government's pocket, so they can do as they wish.
"Do we deny children the right to drive, or drink alcohol, or have sex, or own guns, because of their lack of knowledge about certain subjects? Or is there more to it?"
Ding ding ding. We have a winner.
RDCs point about adults who shouldn't be allowed to vote is a good one, but that's a MUCH larger discussion... one I wouldn't mind seeing, mind you, but any kind of change would require overcoming several SCOTUS rulings, which is a pretty big thing to contemplate.
I guess my point was not so much that paying taxes should be the criterion for the right to vote, but that age is a rough proxy for maturity and life experience, of which paying taxes, supporting yourself, paying rent or a mortgage, feeding yourself, etc. are a part.
All of these things help one understand the implications of political decisions.
Dan Schmutter
"My book would have received much better reviews if children over five were writing reviews for International History Review."
Hmm.
I'm not sure that this makes me sound very good.
Are you advocating a literacy test?
And could be used by the unscrupulous in the future against badgers, ocelots, and squids of all kinds.
No, a political knowledge test. But one applicable only to children.
While they are wards, they shouldn't be entitled to vote: their custodian(s) speaks for them. If they become emancipated, they can vote as far as I'm concerned, no test necessary.
A bright line of age or emancipation is far easier and more sensible to administer than some dumbass trivia test written by a bureaucrat.
That's why undergraduate politics gets the way it does. Everything is happening For The First Time Ever, and it Absolutely Must Be Solved Now.
Which it isn't, and mustn't, 98% of the time.
If you want to make an argument for lowering the voting age to 16 across the board (or for that matter putting it back up to 21), go ahead. The privileges and responsibilities of adulthood kick in on a rolling basis between ages 16 and 25, and I think we can have a reasonable argument about where in that range any given thing should fall. But I wouldn't go outside it.
In New Jersey, we vote annually on our school budget, and the vote is often close. 90%+ of the voters are property owners who pay the taxes and (if they have kids) get the advantage of the schools. Many of the "no" voters, of course, have no kids so don't want lots of money being funneled to the schools.
The most frequent "yes" voters, though, are high school seniors who (1) don't pay property taxes because they live with mom and dad; and (2) won't actually benefit because they are off to college next year.
Many think that they should not be allowed to vote, even if they are 18.
Ilya -
I think the value of life experience and maturity are not so much that they provide knowledge of complex political issues but that they provide context for making decisions.
You correctly point out that many adults lack political knowledge, but at least they have their own experience within which to process whatever political knowledge they do have. An adult who works for a living, sees his taxes rising, has to deal with high medical bills and watches his 401k going down the drain can internalize the implications of policy positions better than a child with no such life experience.
To a child, such things are utterly abstract. An adult may not have sufficient information to make a fully informed decision, but at least he can process whatever information he does have in a meangful context. Children can only process such information in a vacuum, which strikes me as useless for political decision making, suggesting that it is therefore unwise to let them make such decisions.
Dan Schmutter
In what way does such a test avoid the obvious abuses of a standard literacy test?
If those abuses are curbed, why limit the requirement only to children?
Well, then I hope you didn't read any of my posts until I turned 35 this June, or any of the articles I wrote before then.
And it would be an excellent idea to test EVERYONE before allowing them to vote. Oh, I think that was already tried. Wasn't it ruled unconstitutional?
Gee, wasn't property ownership required in most of the US at the time of the founding? Why? Because one needs to have a dog in the fight in order to really be interested.
Why not eliminate suffrage from those who pay no taxes? They have nothing to lose, generally vote to steal from those who work, and contribute little to the world.
After emancipation, however, you're on your own. And since all citizens -- regardless of intelligence level or political awareness -- have desires and requirements from the political system, they need the ability to express that through their vote.
So while I wouldn't be in favor of allowing "children" to vote, I wouldn't mind tying ability to vote with emancipation. So in practice, almost all would vote at 18, but a few precocious souls would get the vote earlier.
My objection is that kids are goofy. I was applying a band of Tree Tanglefoot to my tree in the front yard, when the neighbor kid wandered by. I explained that the material was extremely sticky, and that any insects that tried to climb the trunk would get stuck in it. Then he said he wanted to touch it. I warned him it would stick to his finger and be very difficult to remove.
I came back an hour later to see smears of Tanglefoot on the front of my house. Obviously, he had touched the Tanglefoot and found it was indeed extremely sticky and very difficult to remove. Thus, though I had given this child sufficient knowledge about the stickiness of the material for him to make an informed choice not to touch it, the kid decided to make an uninformed choice, and touch it anyway. The extrapolation to irrational electoral choices is obvious.
For reasons I discuss in the linked article, this kind of experience of is of little value to voting decisions without knowledge of how public policy works, how it affects taces, medical bills, etc. If you do have that kind of knowledge about the effects of policy, it's not clear why you would also need personal experience with bills, taxes, etc., as well in order to be an informed voter. Moreover, of course, there are plenty of adults who lack some or all these experiences. No one (any longer) advocates that they be denied the franchise. If lacking such experience isn't a good enough reason to exclude even the most ignorant adults, I don't see why it should be considered sufficient to exclude highly knowledgeable children.
In what way does such a test avoid the obvious abuses of a standard literacy test?
If those abuses are curbed, why limit the requirement only to children?
As I said in the post, there could be administrative objections to my proposal, such that we wouldn't trust the govt to come up with an adequate test. I don't claim to have addressed these issues.
Uh, but we really do not deny all children these things. I was driving at age 16, which is still legally a child and I was paying taxes (sales and occasionally fica) at that age too. And it is prefectly legal in some situations for some children to have sex and to drink alcohol and to have possession of guns.
The reason we have an 18 year old limit is that there needs to arbirtrary cut off point for convenience sake. Everyone agrees that a 2 week old child should not get a vote, but there is not that much difference between an 18 year old and a person one week away from their 18th birthday in terms of reasoning and moral decision making. You can argue that the date should be earlier, but it would be a big hassle and there would be lots of potential for abuse without one arbitrarily selected date for everyone. And since our society picks 18 years old for most stuff as the time you are officially an adult we will stick with that.
When I was a teenager I read the newspaper pretty much every day mainly for the political news sections and for the most part was probably better informed than most adult voters and I had plenty of friends who were about as informed as I was. I missed helping vote in the republican revolution in congress in 1994 by about 2 months and was a volunteer counting punch card votes in that election. But for convenience sake I am fine with me being disfranchised at that point because we have to a line somewhere and 18 years old has worked fine so far so don't fix what ain't broke.
But life experience and maturity surely have a lot MORE relevance to "complex, large-scale policy issues" than do the simple questions on the test that Ilya is advocating.
Ilya appears to believe that passing a test with questions about the number of stripes on the flag, or the number of representatives in Congress, is more relevant to weighing "complex, large-scale policy issues" than is life experience and maturity. That seems to me to ludicrous. There is virtually nothing on the test that Ilya advocates that would help one weigh complex, large-scale policy issues.
Moreover, the idea that voting should be based on "issues" is unbelievably narrow. We generally don't vote with respect to specific policy proposals in this country; we vote for individuals as candidates. And a lot of what we vote for involves judgements about the types of people those candidates are. And, in that respect, knowledge of "issues" irrelevant - life experience is the primary thing that matters.
All this changed over time to where today all citizens have the right to vote regardless of gender or race. But one issue has remained and that is age. We prohibit children voting due to their lack of experience, and we at intervals limit the elderly due to the effect of age on their strength of mind. Thus, we require soundness of mind as a requirement to vote, or at least the determination that we are responsible for our own actions and thus can make a responsible vote.
Having said all this I note a report this morning that a group of undergrad and graduate students have used a fake address in a battleground state to acquire residency status and thus to allow them to vote absentee in said state while they also vote in their home state. In this these young- bright- minds think they are showing initiative and intelligence. Instead they are showing that they are fully willing to use deceit and fraud to achieve a goal. This is no different then cheating on an exam or plagiarizing other's writing for a thesis. While we are debating the value of having children vote when they don't know what they are voting on, young adults who should know are showing that they lack ethics.
1) No one votes who has not graduated from high school, or earned an equivalency certificate;
2) High school graduates/GED holders may vote if: (a)they are going to colleeg less than full time, or (b)not attending college;
3) No one attending college full time shall vote;
4) College graduates shall be allowed to vote, unless they are attending graduate school full time; if they are attending graduate school full time, they shall not vote;
5) No one with an earned doctoral degree shall ever vote;
6) Congress shall have the power to enforce this amendment through designation of officers to rochambeau violators.
Are you suggesting that the drafters of the 14th extended the franchise to newborns?
There is a contradiction here.
There's a lot more to life than book learning. It might be necessary, but hardly sufficient to making good judgments. Even child prodigies who can do adult level mathematics at age 14 lack the emotional maturity and experiences to make wise choices. A child no matter how smart and stuffed with facts is still in need of adult supervision. I'm amazed that you would make such a suggestion: How old are you?
Arguments connected to statutory prohibitions on drinking, driving, etc. as connected to prohibitions on voting are circular. Why can't children buy beer? Because they don't vote! If children could vote, legislatures would find they should be permitted to drink, and to drive if they can pass the test.
And that's why kids don't vote. That's a kindergarten argument, right there. I could just as easily ask, "How fair is it that Republicans are going to get none of what they want for the next two to four years?"
The answer is, of course it's not fair. It's just, it's the rule of law, democracy in action, and how we run things here. Like a lot of other things in life, it's not about fairness, it's about pragmatism and moving ahead.
How fair is it that 52 or 53% of the population, 80% of which pay no taxes, are about to vote themselves a huge payraise out of my pocket? How fair is it that I'm smart which enables me to be productive, and a couple of my relatives are utter morons, which limits their prospects in life? How fair is it that Tom Brady is dating supermodels, and I'm not?
Fairness... bah!
Ilya appears to believe that passing a test with questions about the number of stripes on the flag, or the number of representatives in Congress, is more relevant to weighing "complex, large-scale policy issues" than is life experience and maturity. That seems to me to ludicrous. There is virtually nothing on the test that Ilya advocates that would help one weigh complex, large-scale policy issues.
I said it should be the "political knowledge equivalent" of the citizenship test. Not that it should be the citizenship test itself. Obviously, a political knowledge test should ask relevant questions about the structure of government, public policy issues, and so on.
Please identify this mythical welfare queen. Under President Clinton's 1996 welfare reform program, there is a 5-year lifetime limit on receiving welfare. If this woman went on welfare at age 21, she used up her lifetime quota at 26. What has she lived on since?
The premise that people must vote based on his criteria for being rational voters is snobbish, elitist and equally irrational. It is the entire purpose of our democratic system that people should be free to use their own opinions in whom to vote for and for what reasons and no one has a right to question that.
As a former high school teacher I adamantly support this amendment, and have advocated it myself.
(*) Per Heinlein, I would be willing to make exceptions to the age 35 rule for persons who had demonstrated maturity and a long-term commitment to Society by (for example) serving in the military, running a successful business, obtaining an advanced degree, being the primary caregiver and/or primary financial supporter of a family, etc., etc.
P.S.> Also, if it were up to me, I would disenfranchise anybody who was receiving more than 50% of their income from the Government -- whether as an employee, a welfare recipient, a contractor, or whatever.
Under our form of government I have the right to question anything I want, *especially* reasons.
Until you have been coerced by your peers into signing some petition to the principal, and thought about it with shame later, you won't know the power of the crowd, except in a dry, useless, intellectual way.
Until you get the first pay stub with all the take-aways listed, you don't have a serious clue what it's all about.
Until you find out what actually happened in history, instead of what is taught in public schools, or have time to talk to an older adult who was there, in one fashion or another, you have no clue about how earlier attempts worked out and cannot judge the claims that whatever's being proposed will work this time.
Actually, this will be a way of having high school teachers multiply their votes.
Really bright kids, the kind who know/think they're bright, usually identify with the brightest around, which is the teachers. Not that teachers are really brighter than many others, but in the kids' world, teachers are DESIGNATED as knowing all. Not like parents who don't have a freakin' clue.
We already have examples of teachers wearing Obama blue to school en masse. I can just imagine the classes.
And I'm sure that the teachers of those seniors (who are a captive audience to whatever crank ideas the teachers have) never use their positions to try to influence the votes of those seniors.
I wish it were a myth. But my wife's older sister has raised her three kids on welfare. And during that time built an addition on her house. For the indoor pool.
I am not sure "Queen" is the best description for someone with no sense of priorities who is willing to live in filth. But I resent sending the check to the IRS every time we visit her.
Great idea! (You did mean to include J.D.s, didn't you?)
Really! Well you should have no problem with children voting them. After all, they too "would use their own opinions in whom to vote for and for what reasons and no one has a right to question that."
Well, that would obviate the need to disenfranchise PhD's, as per my amendment proposal above.
Just ask Venezuela how it's working out for them these days. I wonder why we don't have any wire photos of the new communist paradise of Venezuela -- Or for that matter, where are the photos of Cuba and their glorious recovery from hurricane IKE, the AP ran the story about how easy it was, why no photos?
I do not know about that. I liked some of my teachers, but disagreed with many of their politics and none of the nerds and geeks I hung out with worshipped their teachers like you seem to think. And in my high school AP government and history classes we had spirited current events discussions that showed a pretty wide diversity of politics among the college bound student body.
5) No one with an earned doctoral degree shall ever vote;
Great idea! (You did mean to include J.D.s, didn't you?)
Seamus, my friend, do you think I'd disenfranchise myself while allowing most senators to vote?
No other time? I don't even know your sister-in-law, but can assure you the resentment is more general...
Getting a better voter won't cure the defects in democracy. Once a little more than half the population can exploit the other half economically, they will vote themselves a free lunch. We are almost there. Forty five percent of the electorate pays no income tax, and even the whole bottom 50% only pays 3% of the income tax. Now BHO wants to carry this a step further and directly give money to people who pay no taxes and call this a "text cut." It isn't a tax cut, it's direct income transference and is exactly the outcome one would expect in a democracy regardless of how informed the voters are.
So go ahead march toward the ideal democracy where everyone enjoys unfettered freedom to vote his self interest. But don't think for a moment this won't come without a cost.
No, Ilya. Children haven't got fully functional brains.
No B has a right to x;
All who x should y;
Some A do not y;
Therefore, B has a right to x.
Wait! It doesn't actually follow. How weird.
Whoa whoa whoa! Government employees shouldn't be allowed to vote? Aren't government employees even more affected by many changes in government policy than the average taxpayer, and thus have a signficant interest in who is elected? Not to mention, my getting a paycheck from the county government doesn't mean a hill of beans when it comes to the federal government, so shouldn't I have just as much of a right to voice my opinion about federal issues as anyone else?
Cutting out all teachers in a vote on education or all police, prosecutors, public defenders, and judges in a vote on criminal justice is just going to result in many of the people most affected by, interested in, and informed about an issue not being able to participate. This doesn't strike me as a particularly bright idea. And you're going to have a lot fewer people willing to do extremely important work if they're going to be strongly impacted by laws they have no ability to vote on, plus losing their voting rights on every other issue they care about.
Government workers are not your enemies. You may have a problem with some of them, but there are a lot of things you still need us for!
-- seats/electors are apportioned according to state population. That includes those of voting age, minors (and even aliens) -- people who do not have the right to vote
-- setting aside the alien count for a moment, let's focus just on the adult:minor citizen ratio. Wouldn't the better formula be apportionment based on valid voting age population? As things stand, Utah is overweighted in representation in the House (and in the number of electors). An adult Utahn's vote counts for more than an adult Floridian's vote. The Utah adult is exercising a proxy vote for his 2.4 (or whatever it is) kids, while the Floridian is exercising a proxy vote for his 0.9 kids.
Some of the problem could be addressed by lowering the voting age. If it were lowered to 16, we'd solve 1/9 of the problem ... not much, but better than the current situation?
No, Ilya. Children haven't got fully functional brains.
I'd love to see a relevant definition of "fully functional" (relevant to political decisions, that is), that excludes highly knowledgeable children, but not ignorant adults.
As a practical matter, I think Miss May is wrong. Child voting will be a boon to conservatives who traditionally have larger families. If children as young as 5 can vote, it is more than likely that they will vote the way their parents will tell them. And given that conservatives will have more of these essentially "proxy" votes, it will benefit them, not the Green candidates.
The legal definiton of child (generally someone under the age of 18) is completely arbitrary and that is part of the problem with statements like the above. Nothing special happens to your brain on your 18th birthday to make it fully functional. But for convenience sake we pretend like it does.
Now this leads to lots of individual problems and injustices since their is a wide variance in maturity, intelligence, and moral reasoning among people in the 13-25 age range with some 14 year olds being more deserving of a vote and other rights we let adults exercise than some 25 year olds. But it is too big of a hassle to not pretend otherwise most of the time.
Because a high school freshman who has written a paper for class on poverty may have certain knowledge that exceeds that of most adults, but he cannot be expected to really appreciate that social programs increase his tax bill. Even if he knows it academically, he cannot really appreciate it until he sees it deducted from the paycheck he relies on to pay the rent or his mortgage.
All sorts of life experiece helps process information in a more meaningful way.
This is why I said that age is a rough proxy for maturity and life experience. Though life experience and maturity vary greatly among adults, as a group, children are categorically more likely to lack these on a large scale.
Thus, we have a bright line rule which excludes them from the franchise. That is not to say that the current line is the right one, but it makes sense to exclude a category of people that are inherently and systematically different is this important way.
Dan Schmutter
It is shockingly easy for teachers to mold the minds of high-schoolers when it comes to politics, *especially* the bright kids.
I know because I did it before going to law school.
The trick is to either A) hit them with something highly provocative that holds their attention or B) convince them that what you're telling them is hidden knowledge or something that will get the teacher in trouble for saying.
That meant in as little as four and a half years, I saw proposed by the younger guys schemes that hadn't worked when us old farts tried them. The response to the wisdom of the ages was, invariably, "It will be different this time."
Point is, I needed/had time to experience this. Experience it. See it. See it fail again. Understand it viscerally.
No time, no experience.
IMO, probably the most important thing a voter can learn is that, when somebody says "It will be different this time," the stuff is about to hit the fan.
And you don't learn this by having a high school history book which spends more time on Marilyn Monroe than on George Washington. And a poster on another blog recounted that his kindergarten daughter came home and announced that when MLK was shot, the white people were happy.
It takes time to heal from public education, especially when they start in on the kids so young.
Does this mean I can't give implied consent to a surgery unless I have witnessed the surgery firsthand?
Most lawyers don't consider their J.D. degrees to be doctorates, whether or not they are aware that the degree was once called an LL.B.
I am sorry to say that there is some truth to the statement, as I have had it confessed to me by some of those very white people. Mostly in-laws.
Yes, I and they live in the South.
However I agree that it's pernicious to generalize the sentiment.
The difference is this, Ilya: Ignorance is none of your business to define when it comes to voting.
This is a classic example of an academician putting out absurd ideas, couching them in educated prose, and getting a kick out of the reactions.
Most of us who are only in academic institutions for the purpose of getting back out of them see such stunts as a reason to distrust and fear academicians when they seek to influence the real world.
I personally would be in favor of going back to the system where the senators are appointed by the governor of the state and only the house members are elected. Also people who do not pay taxes should have no vote on tax issues.
The difference is this, Ilya: Ignorance is none of your business to define when it comes to voting.
But of course defining "functionality" is your business. And you still haven't done it.
Let me put things another way: It is most certainly my business, and that of anyone who concerned about the future of democracy, to consider issues related to how voting decisions are made. Ignorant voters help make policy for everyone, not just themselves. Therefore, their ignorance is very much my business.
The citizenship test does ask "political knowledge" questions. Such as how many representatives are in Congress, or who has the power to declare war. (If Ilya disagrees, maybe he could give some examples of questions on a political knowledge test.)
I don't see how answering these questions correctly gives much of an indication of one's ability to weigh "complex, large-scale policy issues".
And this, of course, provides no response to the problem that a condidate's stand on "issues" is only one characteristic on which people vote. Answering correctly the political knowledge test certainly gives no evidence as to a person's ability to weigh all the other characteristics on which he or she votes.
I hope we can agree that, even if expertly nuanced and specified, kindergarten is not the place to start?
I have a friend who has a special needs child, now about twenty-five. It's a convoluted neurological issue, so it's not like getting a brace for a bum leg. At one point, she and the youngster went to a hospital for a six-week diagnostic procedure. The theory was the staff would modify meds and watch behavior in order to decide what, exactly, was the problem. Mom was not allowed to have much to do at all with the kid, in order to reduce variables. So, basically, she sat for six weeks. Despite being extremely bright, an active advocate whose notes on behavior and meds were sought by physicians in the field, she came home a different person.
She had, in six weeks, lost her decisiveness and initiative. Her husband had purchased Christmas presents for the family and asked her, upon her return, to wrap and mail them. The decisions necessary were almost insurmountable. She, having a solid base of a personality, recovered.
It is hard, looking at poverty programs, not to think of this process.
There is little a person receiving assistance can do on his or her own to either improve or ruin the situation, short of being caught committing honest employment. Those who make serious improvements do so despite the infantilizing effects of being in the world of assistance.
So a kid writing a paper on poverty learns this how?
See my comment about parental influence in the original post. Moreover, doesn't this point apply with equal force to 1) people who continue to be influenced by their parents as adults, 2) people who vote as their spouses want them, and 3) anyone who votes based on what he is told by some opinion leader he trusts. Being influenced by the preferences of others, even very heavily influenced, doesn't in itself invalidate one's claims to the franchises.
The ability to make independent judgment should be key in the ability to vote. That is not measured by tests of knowledge. Our options are to give neuropsych tests or to approximate by using age as our criterion.
Could you give an example of a question you think would be appropriate on such an exam? There are people who can absorb thousands of facts without having any ability in analysis or logic. I don't see how enfranchising minors who know more facts than some adults is going to help fix our current problem.
Also, there's no comparing how a 30-year-old is "influenced" by reading NRO and how a 10-year old, especially in a strict religious community, but also anywhere, is influenced by her parents. Again, if you want to lower it to 17, I won't fight about it, but at some point, you're really giving parents extra votes. And, if my analysis is wrong, all the more reason to take Dan Schmutter's arguments seriously.
Or is this not a calender issue, but rather more extreme libertarian craziness, like approval of "consensual" cannablism?
Really, this let-kids-vote post may represent the greatest disconnect between intellectual capacities and real worldliness ever displayed on this blogsite, moreover by one of the VC. (Can anyone suggest more impressive ones?)
2. 1 acre = 1 vote
Shouldn't such logic counsel an inverse relationship? After all, the younger a child, the more invested she is in the result. Certainly a 10 year old will pay a larger portion of the ensuing budget deficit than an 80 year old.
I you also implying removing the age limit for office and having "qualified" children candidates? A 15 year old president could be interesting.....
But this is April Fool's Day in October, right, and I'm reacting as though such nonsense was meant to be taken seriously.
We elect a bad enough government with the voters we have. We have no need to expand the franchise to include more incompetent voters.
My point, of course, is that the average competence of voters would go up under this proposal.
/end of thread
Most of the "arguments" against it above have been indications of The Final Prejudice.
There are volumes of books about how adolescents generally suffer from bad judgment. Bad judgment not in the sense of immorality, but bad judgment in the sense that hormones cause some problems, lack of life experience causes others, and some are rooted in peer group pressures, the sum total is that it commonly results in the inability of adolescents to assign proper weight to the consequences of their actions; or in some cases to think that they will be able to evade the obvious consequences of their actions.
See e.g. Lightfoot, Cynthia (1997). The Culture of Adolescent Risk-Taking. The Guilford Press. ISBN 978-1572302327.
Lack of life experience ''should'' disqualify adults as well as children. The reason we don't exclude ignorant adults is practical; it's much easier to use an easily determined line like "age 18" than to create and administer a fair test for life experience, even though the test is necessarily imperfect and will allow votes from people whom we don't really want to vote.
The fact that the test is imperfect and lets through a few people without the experience to vote competently doesn't mean that that's a good thing, nor does it mean that we should allow voting by a group which consists largely of such people.
So that would be just about everyone serving in the military, along with those who earned military pensions? And it would take in all current government (federal only, or state, county and municipal as well?) employees, including NIH scientists, FBI agents, FAA air traffic controllers, USDA food inspectors, CIA, DOJ, DOD, the judiciary, etc., plus a good many retired ones? Those receiving Social Security pensions, if those pensions and other monies received from the government amounted to more than 50% of their incomes, would be denied the right to vote too? Would interest on government bonds be considered "income from the Government" for these purposes?
But this is April Fool's Day in October, right, and I'm reacting as though such nonsense was meant to be taken seriously.
This list needs to be modified to remove those government functions which are in the Constitution. So we leave NIH scientists, Soc Security, Dept of Education, Welfare,unemployment, etc. on the list of non-voters. State employees cannot vote for statewide offices, county employees cannot vote for county offices.
Defensed and Judiciary are defined in the Constitution as federal roles, so workers of those should be allowed.
You have NO RIGHT TO VOTE!!! I repeat NO RIGHT TO VOTE. Voting is a privelege, not a right.
There are volumes of books about how adolescents generally suffer from bad judgment. Bad judgment not in the sense of immorality, but bad judgment in the sense that hormones cause some problems, lack of life experience causes others, and some are rooted in peer group pressures, the sum total is that it commonly results in the inability of adolescents to assign proper weight to the consequences of their actions; or in some cases to think that they will be able to evade the obvious consequences of their actions.
True, but lots of adults also have bad judgment, sometimes for genetic reasons or other reasons that we can predict with considerable precision. And adults too are vulnerable to peer pressure and often fail to understand the obvious conseqauences of their actions. Yet we do not deny these adults the franchise - even if they are also ignorant to boot.
It would be nice to imagine a world where people must meet certain credentials of competence to vote, but such a world is not real, and wistfully dreaming of such a world is the sign of someone who is not to be taken seriously.
Any attempt to measure competence can only result in a corrupted standard by which to measure.
Either we set an age limit or we will have armies of lawyers attempting to define "competence." Such a scheme will be bad for everyone, except for those lawyers in the short term.
This reminds me of my first year tort class where the professor always said "cha ching," mimicking an old cash register, whenever the word "reasonable" was used in a case.
For goodness sake, Ilya, any developmental psychologist could tell you that it is a matter of judgment, not knowledge. Even in the late teens the prefrontal cortex and white matter is still woefully underdeveloped resulting in poor impulse control, long-range planning, and ability to discern falsehood. Does that sound like a description of a sound voter?
Actually, the trend of recent research demonstrates that this common presumption, which accords with the traditional prejudices of the old against the young, is flat out wrong.
Research pretty consistently shows that adolescents do not underestimate the risks associated with their behavior. They actually tend to greatly overestimate both the near term and long term risks of their behavior ... but then pursue whatever dangerous short-term pleasure is right in front of them anyway.
The problem isn't their perception of risk, it's in their perception of opportunity cost. It's impatience, not a lack of information or experience. A horny teen might actually believe that sex today will result in a terrible STD tomorrow and death the day after that. But then would discount tomorrow's inevitable result as "far into the future" and that of two days from now as equivalent to forever in the future.
I give you Burkean wisdom, and you seek to rebut me with a theory? No wonder the Rt. Hon. Gentleman asceded Mt. Zion and was raised bodily into Heaven in the arms of angels. Or whatever happened to him. He couldn't take it here any longer.
That may be a distinction without a difference, at least as regards the subject of the post.
This is further to his point in the original post: If a minor can pass a test of basic political knowledge (say, the political knowledge equivalent of the citizenship test administered to immigrants seeking naturalization), why shouldn't he or she have the right to vote? Such a precocious child-voter would probably be more knowledgeable than the majority of the adult population.
Now, even if we accept Ilya's contention that the only factor to be used in determining who is competent to vote is "basic political knowledge" (which I think is quite wrong, but let's assume it arguendo), he has not given us any evidence that his proposal would lead to an increase in the "average competence of voters".
Obviously, the average competence level can only increase if the new voters permitted under Ilya's proposal are of higher competence that the current average voter. But does Ilya's proposed test of basic political knowledge indicate which children have higher political knowledge than the average current voter? Based on the citizenship example given, I wouldn't think so.
Now, this is solveable, of course. We could write a more difficult test. Or we could provide that a passing grade for children taking the test is somewhere in excess of how the average voter would do on the test (perhaps a sample of voters could provide us with an average). But Ilya doesn't flesh out his proposal enough for us to know whether average voter compentence would increase or decrease (even, again, accepting arguendo that passing a basic political knowledge quiz is the sole factor to be used in determining who is competent to vote ).
Actually, if the NEA hadn't gone over to the dark side in the 1930's, child suffrage would already be a done deal.
1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
2. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
3. The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.
4. The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.
Someone didn't read the Constitution.
9th Amendment notwithstanding.
As I pointed out, that's a bug, not a feature. It's like saying that since we're okay with not being able to catch every single bank robber, there's nothing wrong with promoting bank robbery. After all, we find bank robbery acceptable...
We don't accept bank robbery. We accept a system that allows for some bank robbery, but not because we accept bank robbery. Rather, we accept it because the alternative (say, locking everyone up from birth to death) would stop all bank robbery, but be much worse in other ways.
Likewise, we don't accept the idea of adults with bad judgment voting, we just let them vote because stopping them would mean creating a system that has much worse problems.
That's okay with me as long as they can't be arrested or sued (or punished in a way which would currently require an arrest or a lawsuit). After all, police and courts are government functions, in this case government functions that can harm them to the benefit of other people who actually do get to vote.
Maybe, but I don't think Hannah Montana would be much of an improvement.
Fortunately I won't have to worry about it in my lifetime.
I cross posted with you. I guess we were thinking along the same lines.
The flower girl at my daughter's wedding is a bright, self-possessed, well-informed young girl of six. She was doing her fourth wedding as a favor to us. On the dance floor, she has more moves than John Travolta. I asked her a couple of questions about various things and was astounded at her level of knowledge.
So when I asked her mom about a theme for a present, I was told that Hannah Montana gear would be just the thing. I think she could be coached to pass any conceivable test Ilya would design in about a quarter of an hour. But if Hannah Montana were on the ballot....
Jeez. I can picture a bunch of pre-pubescents texting away. In working with such, off and on, I can say they're smarter than we think. It's just that their attention span precludes them from finishing some of their projects. But if they are reinforcing each other about a write in for their favorite person in the whole world....
Question: If Hannah Montana gets a huge number of write-ins, does Miley Cyrus get elected? Age notwithstanding, of course.
Yeah. I hold out for judgment tempered with life experience and age is the only conceivable proxy.
The "reporter" asked Obama supporters whether they:
1) Supported Obama because he was prolife--or--because he wanted to keep all the troops in Iraq.
2) If they were okay with Sarah Palin being VP --if it was good that OBAMA ADDED HER TO HIS TICKET.
Of course the ensuing comedy resulted in not a few, but several Obama supporters respnding nonsensically in the affirmative to these.
Not our (society's) finest hour.
Who do you want to be president? ____________________
If they cannot clearly and correctly write the full name of a qualifying citizen then they fail and the vote is thrown away.
I dunno.
I think there is actually a big difference between claiming a class should be denied the franchise because it's members are ignorant, and claiming it ought to be denied because the class members tend to weight future outcomes as less important than current voters.
If you accept the premise that political ignorance is pervasive and ordinary among adult voters, it's obviously difficult to justify denying the franchise to teens by claiming they don't understand politics. Neither do the adults.
OTOH, if you value things with a long time horizon to give payoffs like social stability, capital investment, pension funds