It鈥檚 not controversial to say that contemporary affluent societies do a rather poor job of taking the interests of younger generations into account. This is not only because children can鈥檛 vote and the elderly tend to numbers. It鈥檚 also because many societies have ageing populations, making them demographically stacked against the youngest.
In Italy, for example, . While the numbers aren鈥檛 quite that high in the UK, the phenomenon is still 鈥� with pensioners .
The neglect of children and young people in UK politics is evident. . and understaffed, and young people are saddled with high university fees. They also face a difficult and cannot look forward to a decent, safe pension. It鈥檚 also much harder for them to , compared with previous generations.
And that鈥檚 all without even considering issues related to the climate crisis or how dramatically shrank children鈥檚 lives and social circles. What is clear is that children are directly affected by political decisions and policies. But they don鈥檛 have a say in elections.
In some places, the voting age for some elections has already been lowered to 16. Research shows that young people are more likely to if they start at 16. Labour now proposes this for .
Many want the voting age to be lowered further, or . But any age higher than 0 leaves millions of child citizens without representation of their interests. That problem can be solved by giving children proxy votes from birth, to be cast by their primary carers. We can combine this with any voting age we deem right.
Proxy voting is when a person delegates their voting rights to another person to vote on their behalf. It is . It could work roughly in the same way with children and their parents or caregivers. Instead of delegation, we would use our registers of who is a child鈥檚 primary carer, authorising parents or legal guardians to vote on their behalf, if they are not yet old enough to vote themselves.
Giving children鈥檚 interests a voice
The idea of proxy voting for children has been and discussed by politicians for decades, but hasn鈥檛 been tried yet.
For some, the idea may be concerning, with fears that primary carers will use the votes in their own interests rather than the children鈥檚. Of course their interests are not exactly identical. But they largely overlap on the policies that matter most 鈥� from high quality childcare and schooling to generally improving the life prospects for the young.
For example, if prospects are bad, the young remain economically .
And even if a few carers use proxy votes badly, this is still better than not having children鈥檚 interests represented at all. Furthermore, we could restrict the number of possible extra votes per primary carer, so that people with more children did not have more votes.
Perhaps some would still feel that carers getting to exercise more votes somehow shows that society values families more than the childless. But this is a misunderstanding of proxy voting. It is needed simply to give children鈥檚 interests appropriate weight in our politics, given our demographics.
According to philosophers, there are two main reasons for giving people . The first is simply that the vote is a mark of respect for people as free and equal moral agents capable of forming and expressing their own and the common good of their society.
The second relates to the good consequences of voting: giving people the vote avoids many and raises the chances that nobody鈥檚 important interests will be overlooked.
Having proxy voting in place would likely make it easier to teach children about politics more effectively from an earlier age, and help them to become active citizens. But the main argument for it is simply that it gives weight to their interests in the electoral process. With millions more potential votes to be gained, we can expect that political parties would compete for these votes by committing to policies that are fairer towards the young.
When faced with the disproportionate political influence of the elderly, some philosophers have toyed with the idea of at least (as the Romans ). But many people think this would be a terrible idea: it would be a form of exclusion from politics. Adding proxy votes for children does not exclude anybody.
In lieu of a proxy voting system, if you鈥檙e a parent, this election is a good opportunity to start about the democratic process, the issues you are concerned about and why you vote. You may even want to take them to the ballot box with you. that talking to young people about politics can help them trust in their own ability to effect change.
, Senior Lecturer in Political Theory
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