Blog 6: Children's Suffrage?

Voting rights for women and people of color has been granted in the United States. Now there is talk of a Children’s suffrage. According to the article giving children the right to vote will help put a stop to the growing inequalities.  This idea may seem absurd to most, Dr. Corak who supports this idea initially thought the same thing. The reasons behind giving children the right to vote is fairly simple. The current people who have the right to vote and are more likely to vote are the older population. Therefore they tend to vote for programs and spending that would be beneficial for them. This leaves the welfare and voice of children unheard. Their votes would be called “Demeny Vote” named after American Scholar Paul Demeny. Demeny first introduced the idea in the 1980’s concerned about the declining fertility rates in Europe. You may be wondering how they will get children out to the polls, their solution is to allow the mothers to vote for their children. After all, mothers have their child’s best interest at heart, right?

The reasons why children should have a vote are a good idea. Children are indeed the future, but adult votes pretty much decide what their future holds. I don’t think that their plan however will work. To give the mothers the right to vote for their children seems like a good idea, but only if the mother truly does have the child’s best interest at heart. What if the mother is uninvolved in the child’s life? Wouldn’t she then just have multiple votes that could potentially just benefit her?  Maybe they should look into lowering the voting age instead of just granting rights to all children. That way the child could actually be at least somewhat informed of their decision. Another problem would be parents influencing their child’s vote.  Parents tend to have a great influence over political views.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/08/world/americas/08iht-letter08.html?_r=0