“An idea built the wall of separation between the sexes, and an idea will crumble it to dust.” So said Sarah Moore Grimké, an American abolitionist widely considered the mother of the women’s suffrage movement. I was reminded of her words last week in the context of the media furore which erupted when comments made by US VP candidate JD Vance in 2021 surfaced into the mainstream.
While the lion’s share of outraged column inches focused on Vance’s provocative tongue-in-cheek reference to “childless cat ladies”, it is these words that carry the greatest political significance: “Let’s give votes to all children…but let’s give control over those votes to the parents of those children.” The proposal marks a radical departure from the democratic status quo of the western world, which maintains that the ideal of universal suffrage means “universal” only amongst adults.
There have been semi-regular debates (usually around election times) about the minimum age for enfranchisement. Some countries, such as Scotland and Austria, start at 16 for certain elections, but for the majority it is set at 18. In some of the more conservative nations it is higher: Malaysia and Taiwan start at 20 and in the UAE it is 25. But it seems that democracies are united in their exclusion of those considered “minors” from the franchise. Children are not competent to make good decisions, so the blunt logic goes, and so cannot be given the vote. This has become such embedded orthodoxy that to challenge it invariably meets with ridicule and derision.
Vance’s comments attracted additional controversy because his words — uttered before he knew his every remark would be crawled over by opponents determined to thwart a VP bid — were sloppy. Speaking of parents picking up additional votes is an unnecessarily contentious way of framing the debate; the implication that parents will be “double-enfranchised” creates an impression that the childless are about to be proportionally “lesser-enfranchised”. However, this isn’t about double-counting parents, but about enfranchising currently disenfranchised children. At its core the argument is staggeringly simple: “one vote per citizen”; still contentious, perhaps, and still a novel and radical departure from current norms, but less inflammatory than the reconstructions of Vance’s presumed intent buzzing around social media last week.
Scepticism and status quo bias aside, there are in fact strong democratic, moral and societal arguments for enfranchising children, and — as per Vance’s comments — doing so by way of a proxy mechanism to be invoked where the child is too young to execute that right themselves.
The core democratic argument in favour of truly universal suffrage is that while some children will be below the age of competence to vote, they are nonetheless as much citizens as you or I. They have as much interest in shaping the society in which they will grow up, and aspire to study, work, live and pay taxes. A three year old undoubtedly lacks intellectual and legal competence to vote, but if anything, has a greater stake in the future of the society she lives in than the octogenarian next door.
The three year old’s status as a member of the polity, a citizen with the same right as other citizens to have her interests considered equally, is in no way diminished by her lack of capacity. “But three year olds don’t pay tax” might be the lazy sceptic’s retort: mostly true in practice, but we don’t disenfranchise those who rely on benefits or otherwise don’t have taxable earnings (and, though a moot point for most, children are not exempt from paying tax on any earnings). Children are as much the users and beneficiaries of state support as adult non-taxpayers.
Advanced legal systems such as ours are adept at providing mechanisms for those who lack legal competence to benefit from their rights and interests. There are many precedents, indeed, of parents or other carers being given proxy decision-making powers on behalf of minors in their care, and many of those situations involve decisions of far more immediate and direct impact for children than the right to participate in a political vote; for example consenting to medical treatment, or signing contractual waivers of liability (the “hold harmless” small print at the climbing wall centre, or the horse-riding school).
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From The Critic, here.
