Give Your Children a Voice in the Election

    A municipal election is upon us, and again, my son will be prevented from voting on the grounds that he is under 18 years of age.  Just about everywhere there are government elections, there is a minimum voting age. In most places it’s 18, though there are a few countries where it’s 21, and some where it’s as low as 16. The usual reason for imposing a minimum age is that younger people are deemed not to have the experience, wisdom or maturity necessary to cast a ballot responsibly. 

     Does it work? It isn’t hard to find someone who will complain about the foolishness of the majority of adult voters; almost anyone who voted for a losing candidate will do that. In any event, it is difficult to be sure that the quality of electoral results is better than it would be if we allowed minors to vote.

     In fact, there is something a little disturbing about any rule aimed at limiting the vote to only those we judge to be wise enough. Most modern democracies seem to have abandoned other competency tests for voting rights, and for good reason: it is very difficult to design a literacy test that does not include some form of political or cultural bias, and that would undermine the whole purpose of a free and fair election. 

     Whether or not they succeed in ensuring responsible choices at the ballot box, age limits do prevent young people from participating fully in the democratic process, which has its own drawbacks beyond simply depriving them of a voice. In countries where voting is not mandatory, voters in their twenties have historically poor turnout on election day, and the young are often seen as politically apathetic. But why would we expect anything else, when we’ve given them 18 or more years to get into the habit of not voting?

     In my household, we’ve adopted a simple solution to allow our son to participate, at least until he is old enough legally to vote himself. The three of us hold a miniature election around the kitchen table, and my wife and I agree to cast our ballots for whichever candidate wins a majority of our household votes. In principle, our house is like one of the states in the electoral college system for U.S. presidential elections; whoever wins a majority in the state gets all of the electoral college votes for that state.

     Since there are three of us in our household, and at least two of us are likely to agree on any given issue, we rarely have to worry about what to do in case of a tie. In practice, we discuss our choices well in advance of actually voting, and thus usually reach a consensus. Still, in Canada we have several major political parties, so the possibility of a three-way deadlock at our household election is quite real. It has never happened in our household, but if it does, one possible way to resolve it would be the single transferrable vote (STV).

     Most elections run on a simple “first-past-the-post” system, which means that whoever gets the most votes wins. If there are more than two candidates, you don’t need a majority; you only need more votes than any other one candidate. So in a three way race where candidate A gets 40% of the vote while B and C get 30% each, A wins even though 60% of the voters voted against him. 

     With the STV, voters do not simply choose the one candidate they prefer, but rather to choose as many as they like, and rank them in order of preference. If your favorite candidate doesn’t get enough votes overall to be electable, then your vote shifts to your second choice candidate, and so on. Ultimately the candidate left with the majority of the votes is the winner.

     Such a system is also handy for resolving the three-way tie that could result in our household. If I vote for A with my second choice as B, my wife votes for B with her second choice as C, and my son votes for C with his second choice as B, then B wins as the compromise we can all accept. Of course, there will always be the possibility of an unresolvable tie, but there is less chance of it with the STV system than with first-past-the-post. In fact, STV can even resolve many deadlocks in a two-voter household.

     It seems likely that age limits on voting will be with us for a long time. A baby born today will likely be old enough to vote under the current rules before any major reforms are implemented. Those of us who wish to involve our children in the democratic process need not wait until they are adults. By sharing our own votes with them, we can get them started towards becoming engaged, responsible citizens.