My Dutch friend Paul and I exchange views on various sociological and political issues. He recently brought up the idea of “weighed voting”, with an emphasis on age: Give young people’s vote a greater weight than old people’s.
His rationale for this is that young people are inheriting the earth. They have a much larger stake in the (future) world than us old-timers. As climate change inexorably affects their future, their voice should count more heavily than ours, in determining future policies.
So I’m thinking: Interesting idea, but not terribly original, as it is one variant of the generic and age-old idea of “different votes for different folks.” Actually, history has seen far more cases of votes being weighed differently for different groups, than the basic egalitarian democratic principle of one-man-one-vote. The preferential voting treatment of some groups over other groups has been the rule rather than the exception.
The two basic questions are: 1. WHICH GROUP’s vote do you weigh more heavily and which group’s less so? 2. On the basis of which criterion or criteria do you weigh different groups’ votes differentially?
Only in the 20th century have some advanced democracies come close to universal equal vote for at least all adults. Even so, we do precisely the opposite of my friend Paul’s suggestion, namely denying the vote to one fourth of the population on the basis of age.
His rationale for this is that young people are inheriting the earth. They have a much larger stake in the (future) world than us old-timers. As climate change inexorably affects their future, their voice should count more heavily than ours, in determining future policies.
So I’m thinking: Interesting idea, but not terribly original, as it is one variant of the generic and age-old idea of “different votes for different folks.” Actually, history has seen far more cases of votes being weighed differently for different groups, than the basic egalitarian democratic principle of one-man-one-vote. The preferential voting treatment of some groups over other groups has been the rule rather than the exception.
The two basic questions are: 1. WHICH GROUP’s vote do you weigh more heavily and which group’s less so? 2. On the basis of which criterion or criteria do you weigh different groups’ votes differentially?
Only in the 20th century have some advanced democracies come close to universal equal vote for at least all adults. Even so, we do precisely the opposite of my friend Paul’s suggestion, namely denying the vote to one fourth of the population on the basis of age.
Universal equal vote for all adults has been utterly absent in all societies throughout history. Ancient Athens is said to be the cradle of democracy, and Rome was a republic. However, neither of these two states nor any other one in antiquity came even close to universal equal adult suffrage. To begin with, the female half of the population was excluded. So were slaves and non-citizens. And various states added many additional criteria, such as the requirement to have served in the military, being minimally affluent, belonging to a given social class, etc.
Perhaps the most ubiquitous way to deny a large segment of the population the vote has been socio-economic. This has been either overt - the requirement to own a certain amount of land and other property - or covert, as in the poll tax - a required voting fee.
However imperfect antiquity was, the Middle Ages were worse. The West returned basically to full-fledged theocratic monarchy, and the rest of the world was by and large even less democratic.
But vote weighing has continued even in modern countries into modern times. For example, as recently as in 1893, Belgium proposed the following: Give two or more votes to any male head of a household who owns his house, has a savings account and has a college degree. https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algemeen_meervoudig_stemrecht
(The proposal was not adopted).
Limiting voting rights to society’s upper strata has often been rationalized on the grounds that those strata are more educated and therefore politically more qualified. Plato envisioned a utopia ruled by philosophers. Many US states still employed literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting as recently as 1965.
Vote weighing is equally important in the corporate world, and this is where it is most strongly linked to wealth: In the business world, the number of votes you have is proportional to the number of shares you own.
So, age and socio-economic status ($$) are among the most frequent criteria used to grant voting privileges to some and deny them to others. As to age, my Dutch friend Paul would give preferential treatment to the young over the old. I’m not sure about that. This may be premature. Should we not first consider lowering the voting age? Right now, the young don’t have the vote, period!
Gender has been just as ubiquitous as a basis for voting denial: It was not until the 19th amendment (1920) that American women acquired the right to vote.
And then there is race/caste: In the past, the most obvious caste denied voting rights were the slaves. In 1787 the US Founding Fathers devised the so-called three-fifths Compromise: For purposes of counting a state’s population and determining the size of its congressional representation, blacks counted as three fifths of whites (while still being denied voting rights). While this abomination was repealed after the Civil War, the Republican Party is currently feverishly busy bringing back voter suppression. It may yet succeed in curtailing the vote of poor people and people of color, reducing them to a caste, and perpetuating the rule of a numerical minority of the population over the majority.
Thus, whether based on social class, age, sex, race or caste, the differential weighing of votes for different demographic groups has been widely practiced throughout history. The practice continues, and it is a dangerous game to play. Democracy means one person = one vote. We are all equal. Voter suppression can go in any direction. Pol Pot denied the vote to those born in cities, then causing the death of 2 million Cambodians. India could treat its untouchables preferentially with unforeseen consequences. Societal response always depends on whose ox is being gored. It is therefore important to proceed with prudence. Today, the US is experiencing the return of voter suppression. Combating this vicious attempt to disenfranchise blacks and other under-privileged groups must be a priority. This is not the time to experiment with weighted votes in favor of one demographic group or another. It is the time to reaffirm that democracy means one person = one vote, period. leave comment here
© Tom Kando 2021;All Rights Reserved
