A vote for children

I agree. It’s an issue and worth investigating. Our participation in elections is reducing and, for young viters (amd local body elections), it’s reducing to shocking levels. There’s a problem..not sure what the solution is or the evidence.

Hi Everyone, As a starting point, rather than take my suggestion as the solution, is it possible to agree that there is an issue? We take for granted so much in the western society that our democratic system is good and it works that we are blind to the elephant in the room. That is that it is not one person one vote because a massive section of society is not allowed to vote. You can say that they are represented by their parents.. but that basically is saying they have one vote to cover themselves and their child. In other words less than one vote per person for a family with children.

Hi Mahurangi, Lowering the voting start age to 17 would also be something i would support. If an educational civics class in high school taught the importance of democracy and making up your own mind, then what a fantastic thing it would be to finish the school year with a bus trip to the polling booth. I believe my suggestion in its original form is more democratic than the present system . I understand the principle of democracy is equal representation.. that each perspn is of equal value. However 0 to 15 year olds cant vote, and additionally get no weighting in the system. This is a solution to this problem. The parent isnt getting more votes. They are getting a single vote, and the child up to max one , is getting a vote, however the parent is making a decion who to vote for on their behalf. If you want to think of it another way. Give the child a vote with their name on it, but the parent must sign and tick the box on their behalf.

Hi Luke, Its not disciminatory, because its cancelling the discrimination against children in that they dont get a vote. I agree you cant reward bigger families so Im suggesting its only to a max of 1.5. In other words .. the two patents together get an additional weighting to the maximum of one child in total. My vote can only ever be 1.5 max

I think most people have misuderstood the suggestion. Im not suggesting children actually vote or that they vote for other children. i am suggesting that the vote of a parent has a greater weighting to make up for the fact that childrens interests are not adequately weighted into the democratic count. Of course we have to take for granted the parent has their childs interests at heart, which is a belief of society that that is generally the case.

Most 10 year olds are not independent enough thinkers to do any more than repeat what they are told by their parents or what they hear in school.
Also no guarantee that the parent would vote as per the childs wishes.

Not a feasible concept if you think about it. Effectively you are giving parents of children an additional vote. This is discriminatory to all those without children or people with adult children over the age of 18. You are also rewarding those with bigger families. Does this not also incentivize some people to have more children at a time where the world actually needs less mouths to feed? Lots of factors here to consider. I see where you are coming from. However there are probably better ways to achieve the log term goals you are after which are admirable by the way.

This is a patently undemocratic concept. What is needed, is for the age of enfranchisement to be lowed so that 18 is the average age that a person can vote, not the minimum. The evidence is that the older a person is when they are first entitled to vote, the lower is the likelihood that they will. Beyond that, see: Prioritise Kids Voting and Automatic Voter Registration

I am not too keen on this idea.

My specific concern for this is that it is effectively giving parents additional votes and those votes may not be what the child wants to vote for. Also does the vote follow the mother or the father.

Youth representation in parliament is good but there must be better ways to do it. If you want actual youth representation in parliament then perhaps an additional seatsl that is extra region such as the Maori seats are the way to go. Perhaps the representative elected would not count towards confidence and supply but would otherwise be representative. You may think that the representative would be powerless as a result but these seats would be hotly contested and we’ll looked after as the treatment of these would determine the voting habits for tens of thousands of future adult electors.