75 million Americans couldn’t vote in the last presidential election.
75 million children couldn’t vote in the last presidential election.
Did you see it? Does it matter — or rather — should it matter whether our children vote? To some, it’s a crazy idea; to others, it’s true democracy.
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Why We Think Children Voting is a Bad/Terrible/ Catastrophic Idea
“There is no good reason to exclude children from the right to vote”.
As someone who knows a thing or two about politics, elections, and children, Professor Runciman is always surprised by the reaction to his bold proposition. Even I was when I read the title.
Let’s be honest — did you baulk at the title? What thoughts and emotions came to mind? Maybe you were thinking that would be stupid, even catastrophic. Maybe you were silently (or loudly) gleeful, betting on the possible outcome that lowering the voting age would translate into endless Democrat victories and stop Republicans in the midterms and even Trump 2024. The young, after all, usually are more liberal (though, as Runciman points out, we’ve yet to test 6-year-old voting behaviours, so who knows…).
My own initial reaction, having both written a politics dissertation on democracy (and elections) and as a happy father of at least one little monkey, were cliché:
- A 6-old-year can’t think for themselves.
- Children can’t think for society.
- On a neurobiological level, their brains won’t finish growing until their early twenties and their empathy continues to mature alongside this development. They’ll be easily swayed by parents, influencers, politicians’ promises. They’ll be a “mob”, according to Socrates, who long feared that democracy would mean the rise of demagogues à la Trump.
But then I thought:
- Do we adults always think for ourselves?
- Think of society?
- How many of us are really educated in politics, from policies to processes to the detailed resumes of politicians? How many of us are easily swayed, form tribes, storm our institutions like a…
At election time, I try my best to “think freely and critically”, reading up on the policies, learning about the candidates, and considering views across the political spectrum.
But I usually end up voting based on old biases and beliefs anyway.
All of us adults will do something similar. We’re emotional, not rational creatures. In fact, research shows how we “vote with our eyes” (more attractive candidates receive more votes), and that if people actually voted based on policies alone then green and far-right parties would lead many governments.
And that’s the heart of Runciman’s argument. 6-year-olds won’t break democracy because they can’t think. Instead, 6-year-olds — and indeed all children — voting will make it more representative.
That is, it’ll save democracy. Let’s consider…
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Why Children Should Vote: The Rising Bias Against the Young
Children have the same — if not even a greater — stake in the future. From burning fossil fuels to burning forests, from education systems that stifle creativity to a job market that no-one is prepared for. And that’s only the beginning.
Yet the young also have less power than the old, even more so in today’s politics. This is down to one principal reason: demography.
The basic point made by Runciman is that the proportion of the elderly compared to the young is higher than ever. Modern society is an old society, an inverted demographic pyramid, with longer lifespans and decreasing birth rates.
Since the older generations are more numerous and are more likely to vote as well, power has been slowly shifting ever higher up the age groups over the years.
Consider:
- Many young people are apathetic. They believe their vote won’t matter after seeing time and time again that their voices are ignored.
- If power concentrates in the later decades of life, the chances of true representation of the young are less and less, and this defeat transforms into discouragement.
Overall, allowing children to vote will address an important political problem: our troubled society.
In an age where the environment and the future seem more urgent than ever, the argument for those most affected by it to be able to have a say seems more justified than ever.
“If a democracy gets stuck, it has to open up to fresh voices, that’s the lesson of history” — David Runciman
Allowing 6-year-olds to vote won’t mean children run the country — they’ll still be outvoted by adults, especially older ones. But it will mean that voting becomes more representative —after all, politics affects us all.
It may also encourage us to take democracy seriously, actually teaching it as a subject at school and discussing it more openly as families and as a society. Imagine if we really learnt, at a young age, and considered:
1/ What is democracy?
2/ What does it mean to vote?
3/ How can I think freely and critically?
“We have forgotten all about Socrates’s salient warnings against democracy. We have preferred to think of democracy as an unambiguous good — rather than a process that is only ever as effective as the education system that surrounds it.” — Why Socrates Hated Democracy, The School of Life
Fighting bias against the young and saving democracy, therefore, seem like good reasons to consider why children should vote. After all, everyone else can, and we’re not exactly doing too well these days…
“When it comes to democracy, children don’t count. Why not?” — David Runciman
What Do Children Think? Some Surprising Examples
Parents and non-parents alike — i.e. adults with the vote — have a lot of opinions on whether children should vote.
Of course we do. Like when men had opinions about women not needing the vote in the early 20th century: why burden them, and they’ll just vote the way their husbands do anyway. Turns out women can think independently, and they are happy to vote. It didn’t end democracy; instead it made it more representative.
So what about children? Can they think independently? (I ask Small Boy what he thinks: he thinks people should be able to “work less and play more”, “have more nature”, and “eat more cake”). And, perhaps the question we all forget because we dismiss it outright, do children want to have a say? (Well, yes.)
Greta Thunberg (15)
Greta was only 15 when she began her climate strike, sparking a worldwide movement that has now thrust her into the political activist seat. At 15, she wouldn’t have been able to vote in the Swedish parliament elections — she’s only just eligible now, at 19.
Any yet, she surely seems to qualify as someone eligible to vote. At 15, she was clearly politically engaged, knowledgeable, and willing to fight what she believed in. Indeed, in her speech for the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference, Greta made full use of this painful irony:
“Since our leaders are behaving like children, we will have to take the responsibility they should have taken long ago.”
Ciara De Menezes (10)
Some children point out the hypocrisy in who can vote in elections. After all, the elderly can vote on issues that will affect the young (sometimes only affect the young) — where’s the logic in that?
“Older people should have the right to vote, but I don’t think they should have the right to vote on all subjects. I’ve seen lots of stories on the news about issues that affect the whole of my life, but won’t really affect older voters. I’m thinking of climate change. It’s harming our planet, and it’s harming our health — not only children, but everyone, and it’s going to affect children more because we’re going to live longer.”
Wilfie Tudor-Wills (6)
Even if the very young might not seem politically-minded, they are life-oriented. They have clear ideas and concerns that they wish to express.
Take this six-year-old’s view from a couple of years ago:
“I think there should be more houses in London. There are a lot of people in this city and they need places to live. My mummy told me there are more people living in London and they need more houses. And also, I think there should be less pollution, because it’s bad for your lungs. If I could talk to Theresa May I’d tell her to get more people to have electric cars because they’re better for the world. And also I’d like there to be more parks. I love going to the park. My favourite thing is the swings. Parks are really important places.”
And if you asked a child you know, maybe even your child, what would they say? Go on, try. Did they surprise you?
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Should Children be Allowed to Vote?
75 million Americans couldn’t vote in the last election. Is that democracy?
My son is 4. He won’t be voting any time soon. He’s intelligent, but still lacks a lot of experience in even the most basic things in life. The voting age won’t be lowered to 0 on any practical level, and any attempt otherwise to take it seriously would likely be symbolic.
But could he, at 6 — in just 2 years — be eligible to vote? Would he be able to, or perhaps more importantly, should he be able to?
Quite possibly.
As Runciman (and quite a few others now) reminds us, most arguments against lowering the voting age boil down to a perceived lack of competency. But what constitutes competency is often very arbitrary — and always works against the young. 80- and 90-years olds can vote, in increasing numbers. Those with cognitive decline, political apathy, or with extreme political views can vote.
So why not children?
True democracy is representation for all — it’s both beautiful and beautifully messy.
What about a child’s innocence? Maybe children should be “protected” from politics. But children haven’t been protected from the harsh realities of COVID-19 and lockdowns, nor the environment and their future. The future, after all, depends on the present.
Society won’t come crashing down if we let children vote. It won’t be revolutionary in that sense. The revolution will be quiet. A quiet adjustment of policy, maybe. Enfranchisement and true representative democracy, certainly.
What do you think? (Or maybe even better, what does your child think?).
© Jamie D Stacey 2022
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Element5 Digital on Unsplash