This is the last post you can comment on for June.
This writer makes the seemingly crazy argument that there should be no legal voting age whatsoever. Should the voting age be lowered? Should parents be able to cast votes for their children? Is he right that the point of voting in a democracy is to defend your own interests? Or can and should we look beyond that when going to the polls? What are the strengths of this writer’s argument, and what does he fail to take into account?
In my opinion, Bernstein’s idea is crazy. Although he gave a few good arguments such as the one about democratic systems, I still think that allowing children to vote would be of no benefit to them and to the society. I can imagine that this would really only add extra votes to parents. Although he argues that parents take care of everything that is connected to their children, then this actually violates the basic principles of democracy. Everybody should decide and vote according to their own interests and so children should not be influenced by their parent’s opinions.
ReplyDeleteDeveloping my argument, I think that young children (as defined aged 8 through 14) are not able to decide wisely on who to vote for. These children live in secure places called homes that are taken care of by their parents and thus don’t really experience what it takes to be an adult. To explain, only adults know why vote for whom as they know what they need - if they need higher wages, then they vote for people promising that. If they want lower taxes or better living conditions, improved health, education or insurance, refunds or higher social benefits, then they vote for other people who promote it. But none of the children knows any of these.
In addition, I also think that children should be left to live in their secure children world and should not be distracted by such things that matter to us, adult people. The childhood should be a real childhood and I believe that no-one really wants a child that would know everything about politics, economics and social sciences like an encyclopaedia. And I believe that none of these children are really keen to vote, at least from the wise point of view. Of course it might be an interesting experience for a child to do something that adults do, but that’s all. And therefore I strongly objection the statement that children should be brought to the polls when their parents cast votes on their behalf. However, I agree with lowering the legal voting age to 15 or 16. This is because I am sure that these young people sometimes know more than adults and are therefore able and mature to make wise voting decisions.
This comment is a normal comment, although it may seem that it will inevitably oppose Zuzkas since we have different opinions.
ReplyDeleteThe “vote from birth” has my full support. Most of the people say that children are not reasonable enough to vote, this argument was used also to prevent giving women the vote and in the United States, to certain minorities. It wasn’t valid then and it’s not valid now. Children have opinions, thoughts and care about the future. The most important thing is that they have different views from adults and they see everything optimistically . I think that adults constantly underestimate children just because they haven’t finished school, although many of adults haven’t too, as mentioned in the article. And I honestly don’t think that children are more unreasonable than an average voter who is very easily convinced by populist like promises.
Furthermore, if I had to sum up why I think we should give kids the vote, I would say that kids are the future, and we should vote for the future. Winning elections is about convincing certain groups, and these groups decide all elections. For example, in many developed democracies old people enjoy a lot of government attention and support. This is why people retire early, have high pensions and so increase the healthcare spending. Elderly people represent a huge amount of votes that all politicians are interested in. You can also have a look at the public debt, huge amounts of money are being borrowed to fulfil the wants of the current voters,at the expense of children who will have to pay this money in future. We simply allow citizens (parents and grandparents) to decide things whose consequences they won’t have to face, children who face the consequences have no say.
As the article author says, some children cannot vote because they’re just too young. Therefore their parents will have to do it instead of them. This is called family voting, when the father influences the voting of other family members. But again, wives usually vote the same way their husbands do, although they are supposed to be independent and rational. Furthermore, even 18 year old voters are influenced by the political views and values of their parents they grew up with. After all ,I think that kids should be able to vote whenever they decide that they want to vote.
This measure would give a bigger say to families with lots of children. I admit, conservatives would get more votes since they tend to have more kids than liberals . But it is reasonable because big families even have bigger impact onto the future of the country. Today, two liberals with one kid effect the political decisions the same way as two conservatives with 10 kids.
I was always told that a principle of democracy is that each person should get a vote , children are persons, so they should get the vote. One person, one vote, it is so obvious ! There are even benefits to it such as education of kids and focus of politics towards distant future. At last, I believe that it would be just.
Most readers of this seemingly crazy idea would say that children are in no position to vote or to decide the future, since they are “too young” to understand the given situation. The argument of being “too young” is argumentum ad hominem and is widely used by adults in order to silence some of their children. However, my opinion is that children, I would say children from 14 to 18 years of age, are able to realize the situation, are able to evaluate the situation and should be given the opportunity to decide on future, since it is mostly their future.
ReplyDeleteIn Slovakia, although not only in Slovakia, we have a tendency to do things and to support matters that create lots of negative profit. To name a few, Tipos scandal and trial with several insurance institutions will, if lucky create only debts of several millions and in the worst case it might be about 500 times worse. However, once the day come and we have to start paying the bills, the present government and present politicians won’t be here anymore and it will be our burden to carry. And so, to say that we are too young to know and to decide the future is outrageous, since it is our future that is being created. And we should have our say in that process.
Not every teenager reads news, watches news or even cares about some old people, all dressed up in nice suits, talking about something they know nothing about and pretending to be the leaders of the pack. However, some kids do enjoy politics, economics or some kind of social study, and adults might be shocked but some kids know more about politics than they do. Yes, some of us know a lot about politics and we regret zero chance of showing it.
Some might know plenty, however, majority knows close to nothing. It is perfectly normal for teenagers in age of 15 to not care about some adult stuff. They live their perfect lives of carelessness and shouldn’t be bothered by some general elections. However, what I propose is to have a special category of votes for children from 14 to 18. Since the general elections are every four years and the presidential are every five, each child would get a chance to vote at least once in their childhood. The votes, according to my proposition, won’t have a full weight, but they would count as a half vote, since children are not as responsible as we might think. Also, what is very important is that media campaigns of political parties must not have any message that would affect children and their decision. No campaigns aimed at children, no treats for votes, everything would be supervised by a commission that already oversees the process of media relations. Every little message that will push a child to either the right or the left will be severely fined and not left unnoticed.
Children are our future and they should be granted a chance to decide on their future. They know plenty and should not be underestimated. However, we must take all measures to protect them from all the media frenzy that comes in the period before elections. Nonetheless, children should be granted a chance to have their say and they should be heard and respected for their opinions.
@Zuzana
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with your opinion on every level possible. It is quite crazy to let little children and infants vote. I think that the negative consequences of this decision would of this outweigh the benefits that Bernstein introduced by far. As you said, the little children would only add votes to their parents and how could they not? They are in every way influenced by their surroundings, in other words their main authority, their parents. However, it could be reasonable to let teenagers aged from 15 years vote. They are old enough to know a thing or two about politics and can have a serious opinion based on justifiable arguments on this matter at the given age. Furthermore, I cannot but agree that childhood is the time of life that is dedicated to games, sweet ignorance and the pure joy of being a careless center of attention. Why take this away from the children, when even we miss it from time to time?
One thing I like about vote-from-birth is that it gives less political power to elderly people, who are too conservative. Their conservativeness blocks the new ideas of younger politicians. Therefore, it makes the country less able to improve itself. The vote-from-birth system would give more power to families with younger children, as it is stated in the article. I think that it is good, because younger families will probably live in the country for longer time than old people. Therefore, they can make changes that will alter their future. Old people could not alter their future because they would dead. They can only alter the future of the younger generations. Sometimes, it seems to me that they do not realize this and they vote for their own profit, not the profit of their children. On the other hand giving more power to the families with lots of kids could be harmful for the society. The more kids you have, the more political power you have in vote-from-birth system. Imagine a person who is alone. He or she would have only 1 vote. But when someone has 10 children, he or she has 10 more votes, because he could decide for the young children.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, young children are less resistant to manipulation from the outside. They could be easily manipulated through cheap advertisements or some TV shows. Also, a teacher in primary school could be very influential for the kids. Therefore, he can manipulate them to vote who he wants. Parents are the only ones who could stop the manipulating of their children, because they are able to not let the children to vote who they want. But what about the children in dormitories? Who would protect them against the manipulation in the world? Maybe the leaders of the dormitories. It means the leader of a dormitory would have as much votes as the children he takes care of plus his own. I think it would be unfair for someone to have thirty or more votes.
Tomas Langer 3.IB
@Tomas& Zuzka
ReplyDeleteTomas I agree with your point that the vote from birth gives less political power to elderly people, but at the same I have to say that by this measure conservatives will have greater power than liberals(as you called them young politicians). Conservatism tells us that we aren’t individuals and that we must act in the good of the whole society. The best way to do this is to be a good parent. You can find plenty of articles on the internet talking about conservatives out breeding liberals. In other words it isn’t so easy to say that all old people are conservatives, especially not in America. I also believe that children can be manipulated as easily as adults, there is no difference since elections are just about manipulation and propaganda. After all, the parties wouldn’t be investing so much money into ads if adults couldn’t be manipulated. Furthermore ,children in the dormitories are the ones with the biggest right to vote. State takes care of them and therefore they should have the right to evaluate their work. Otherwise it can happen that the state will transfer money from children in dormitories to people who have the right to vote in order to gain their support.
Zuzka, I think that this measure would benefit the society, focus of politics to distant future, less depts., lower political power of old people. It admit that it would add votes to the parents . But imagine that one party had in its plans to lower family benefits and increase pensions. As we know, almost half of the American population is over 50, and thus would vote for the party. But if the 0-18 kids could vote, which represent 25 percent of the current population, the results would be very different. And as I say, children inevitably will always be influenced by their parents opinion, politics especially in the U.S. is very closely related to the way you were brought up. There are many core voters whose children always vote the way their parents do-especially among conservatives, no matter how old they are. Maybe children don’t have any sophisticated interests, but they for sure don’t want to live in a country with huge debts that were made in order to pay the high living standards of their grandparents.
I cannot negate the fact that children don’t know what is it like to be adult. Children only experience to be a child, a child that is also in contact with the country it lives in. It has to go to school, to doctors, plays outside. All of these aspects are also affected by politics. So when it doesn’t like the school system, lack of football fields and so on, why shouldn’t he have the right to have its say in elections. In other words, everyone will vote the one who might bring him the most benefits, parents as well as children.
There are elections only once in four years, it isn’t as much effort to go and cast your vote. In addition, only the children who want to vote would vote. If the child is interested in politics the same way other kids are in football for example, why should we try to suppress this interest just because no one wants to have a child that knows something about politics. I also think that vote-from-birth would give kids better education than 1000 civics classes they all have to go through.
Check this video out ,its quite funny –even babies are interested! :D http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n57w1zqiwPs