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

[ferriludant.livejournal.com]

Kids learn responsibility by being able to make choices, which includes the right to make mistakes. And they make a lot. As parents, we try to shield them when it's appropriate. I'll confess that we may do it too often, but how many mistakes do you want them to make with the body politic?

I'm in favor of allowing *less* people to vote. A civics test, plus some basic reasoning skills, plus current events, plus proof of employment, plus of course only the people who agree with me. ;)

finally!

[ladyariadne.livejournal.com]

Hear hear!

I too do not believe everyone should have the right to vote.

there should be SOME sort of competency test given, possibly literacy and such, before someone is given the privledge. Maybe at that time it would be looked upon as more of the important thing it is if people could not vote until they earned it.

Re: finally!

[jducoeur]

Granted -- at the philosophical level, I somewhat agree with you. My main problem with this idea is that I suspect that we'd wind up with a civil war over the writing of that test.

Indeed, I'm not entirely sure it's *possible* to write such a test without writing some level of political bias into it. In a country where I find myself on the mailing list of an organization (the AFA) with whom I disagree about *every single thing*, I'm not sure there's enough common ground to be able to write it.

So this is a theory vs. practice thing for me. In theory, it's a very interesting idea. In practice, I doubt it's possible...

Re: finally!

[ladyariadne.livejournal.com]

I have not worked it all out mind you, as only a passing thought on occassion.... but having a basic literacy test for reading and math... and perhaps at LEAST what is required knowledge for becoming a US citizen... I see no political bias in that.

But in the long run I do not think voting is an intrinsic right. It should be earned, even if it is just simple knowledge.

As for kids voting.... most do not have the mental capacity or reasoning for voting, but if we want to encourage it... make it part of the school cirriculum that during voting seasons they set up mock voting. And the results are posted. But dear gosh No Kids VOTING>

Re: before someone is given the privilege

[etherial.livejournal.com]

Ah, see, there's your problem. Voting isn't a privilege. It's a duty.

Re: before someone is given the privilege

[ladyariadne.livejournal.com]

Its a duty for someone who has bothered to put some time and education into their choices. Part of that is literacy. Part of that could be the caring to learn what we at least require new citizens to learn.

People should not just be given a vote. they should earn it somehow to show they have the responsibilty to use it correctly (and no there is no political leaning in that for those who want to read into it. The rightest and leftist and all those in between would both have to meet the "standards" which would be relatively simple and not some political gangbang ..such as the idea I gave above. Do I have it worked out? No. But it cant run te way it is now.)

Re: earn it somehow

[etherial.livejournal.com]

If we empower the government to choose who gets to vote, we ensure tyranny.

Re: earn it somehow

[ladyariadne.livejournal.com]

I will agree to disagree since the founding fathers in and of themselves DID choose who got to vote and encompassed that in the foudnation of this country.

We have over time changed that to include minorities and women, but they were firm in their resolution that NO not everyone had the right to vote.

And I agree with that. If you as a citizen can not even answer the basic questions that is required of new people coming INTO this coutnry to be a citizen, then NO, you do not have the right to vote. And that is not tyranny to expect SOMETHING out of the populace.

Re: before someone is given the privilege

[siderea]

Its a duty for someone who has bothered to put some time and education into their choices. Part of that is literacy.

1) No. It's not. It's just not. It's perfectly possible, in this day and age, to be just as informed as an average literate voter without knowing how to read.

2) So long as the primary agent of literacy in our society is the government it is a dangerous conflict of interest, easily exploited, to use literacy as a voting credential. It becomes trivial for a faction of society -- a class, a race, a religion -- to take over the literacy-dispensing government agency of a locale and see to it that no one but their own consistently get sufficient literacy to pass the test, thus ensuring that their own faction out-numbers other factions at the polls. In fact, it can happen so easily accidentally, without malice aforethought, that it's essentially harder to stop it from happening than to cause it to happen.

Which is why the Supreme Court struck down literacy tests. They had been instituted and were being used precisely to filter out voters who didn't belong to the dominant faction.

they should earn it somehow to show they have the responsibilty to use it correctly

I like Heinlein's idea: demonstrate your responsibility to your country by enlisting. Only people who serve in the military earn the right to vote.

Re: before someone is given the privilege

[ladyariadne.livejournal.com]

Again I will agree to disagree.

Being a strong proponant of literacy I am vehement against your statment that someone can be truelly informed without being able to read. Oh wait.. they saw it on TV... Yes, that Must mean its true. No. At least being ble to read they can hunt down varied sources to try and prove or disprove ideals and candidates... something you can NOT get from TV or other avenues.

I do poo poo the statment that any literacy test is somehow classist and factiony... Perhaps some WERE made that way. That does not mean all are inherantly "fill in the blank". There can independent peoples who make out the "tests", that are simple reading and writing and basic knowledge that any reasoned peron should know. And if that is too much ....

If that is the case then, lets simplify it and make all eligle citiznes have to answer the SAME questions as incoming new citizens to this country to aquire this right to vote. IS that "fill in the blank" ist...> No. That is demanding that our citizens know just as much as what we expect out of immigrants, which sadly the majority of born citizens do not.

I do agree that military service should be an automatic.

Re: before someone is given the privilege

[jducoeur]

Hmm. I actually disagree about the literacy point, on a couple of grounds.

First, while I agree that text gives you access to far more and better information than video today, it isn't clear that that's going to hold true for more than a few more years. We're heading into the *true* Video Age now, where the old enormous barriers to entry are mostly gone. So I think it's plausible that you'll be able to be as well-informed by video as by text, quite soon now. (And so writing literacy into as central a precept as democracy seems short-sighted.)

Second, it kind of misses the point. True political literacy is a matter of critical thinking: not where you get your news, but the ability to *think* about it intelligently.

There exist *no* news sources that are truly unbiased -- the better ones don't pretend to be. (That's why The Economist remains my favorite: they're very upfront about their political bias, so their readers can take it into account.) Text is just as prone to bias as video: it just feels more reputable because it's text. What we really need is an electorate that's capable of taking diverse input and *understanding* it. But that's probably untestable; certainly, it's not a straightforward test. That's what I was alluding to when I said that we'd wind up with a civil war over the test.

So basically, I think a literacy test is beside the point. Even if you could do it perfectly, it's not testing the right thing...

Re: before someone is given the privilege

[ladyariadne.livejournal.com]

yes the critical thinking is very important. Yes no source is unbiased, but that is were the ability to go to more then one source is important. To show they have the capability to actually DO it. i agree with that. Whether they do that or not is a different issue. I think we agree on that.

How they think about it and how they do their research more or less leads to that "ist" thing she was talking about. To show they at least can is start and probably the only not "ist" thing we can do as a society.

I think part of where they get the news is important if we dont use SOME sort of knowledge and literacy test. For example ifone of the unknowledged masses that can vote walks through that new 27million dollar museum in Kentucky and never does any other reading or research or has that capability... they are going to think humans and dinosaurs lived together and the grand canyon was made a few thousand years ago.

Yes there are plenty that still do that, but at least they have the knowledge option.

i guess my point is that even the knowledged will do or not do with the knowledge they get or dont get. classifying that is the "ist". classifying whether you actually have some knowledge IMO, is not.

Re: before someone is given the privilege

[metageek.livejournal.com]

First: I'm not convinced that an illiterate can ever be capable of True Critical Thought (tm). To me, if you're going to evaluate an assertion logically, you need to be able to parse it more carefully than you can do if your language is purely oral. But I admit that that's hand-waving.

Second: I assert that it's vital for an informed citizen to be able to read the laws, to understand for himself what his representatives are doing. Most people don't do this often (I've done it probably fewer than 10 times in my life), but it's essential that the populace be able to, or they'll be much easier to fool.

(I suppose one could solve that by coming up with sort of non-textual format for legislation; but I'd be leery of such an effort. We have thousands of years of experience with examining written laws for loopholes; throwing that out the window in favor of video would be scary.)

[ladysprite.livejournal.com]

Just out of curiosity, are you serious about the 'proof of employment?'

And if so, what about full-time parents, or retirees?

Again, just curious, and I agree with you on the other points....