Voting from birth?

[jducoeur]

This morning on the BBC, there was an interview with a group in Germany that are campaigning to lower the voting age to -- well, birth, basically. The idea would be to allow kids to vote as soon as they felt themselves competent. Looking around on the Web, I find that the idea has been around for a few years.

My initial reaction was that this was amusing, but rather goofy -- that it's entirely ridiculous on its face. And yet, there is a part of me that rages against the growing infantilization of how modern society treats kids (and, indeed, adults), and a feeling that we do ourselves a damage by not teaching them real responsibility at a young age. The right to vote is the most serious responsibility we give to our citizens: important, and not trivial to do well. Humans learn best by doing, and I do wonder if the best way to teach people that voting is important, and should be taken seriously, is to let them actually *do* it from youth.

So I find myself of curiously mixed minds here. Part of me thinks the idea is fairly preposterous, and would dumb government down. Another part of me thinks that it could, instead, smarten our citizens up. Really, I suspect that a mix of the two would be true. Opinions?

Comments

[siderea]

[continued]

Unfortunately, the class of people that, statistically, children most need to be protected from is... their parents. Those who would strengthen dominion of parents over their children usually take the rhetorical tack of conflating the interests of parents and children. But the interests of parents and children are often enough at odds, and what parents would like to do with their children is not always in their children's best interests.

This is one reason I don't feel it entirely adequate for parents to represent their children's interests at the polls. Parents, as a class, are naturally given to arrogate to themselves rights over their children, to choose what they think should happen to their children rather than letting their children choose, even when those children are perfectly capable of making that choice. After all, it might be a choice the parent doesn't like, and with the power available, the temptation is always there to compel where one can't convince.

[jimpage363.livejournal.com]

I think we've gotten far afield and probably missed the most important point in the dicussion of "should or shouldn't". Children, and that is a large group, so let's say from 0 - about 15 or so, are not developmentally capable of making decisions for which they can be held as responsible as an adult making the same decision. I say this as a youth educator with a degree and many years of experience, let alone research, backing me up.

Your points regarding parents not always acting in their children's best interest is well-taken but can hardly be considered as descriptive of the majority.

There is no absolute justice nor perfect democratic solution, mostly because this is the real world. Remember the quote about democracy being a terrible system but it's better than any other system we have?

The current system excludes children from the voting populace until they reach their majority. It also disenfranchises felons, but I'm Ok with that, too.

Thanks, Justin, for bringing forward an interesting point to debate!