by RS Coolidge

Created on: December 31, 2008

A suggestion has been made that parents should be allowed to cast as many votes as they have children. I suspect that this suggestion was made to 'empower' children who are kept from voting by age restrictions. Perhaps, the motivation comes from people who feel that having children means that they have a greater stake in who gets elected and what policies are followed. Either way, the idea is foolish for several reasons.

First, The Constitution was not drafted exclusively by single men. Most of the signers of the Constitution had families. In fact, since the beginning of time people have had families. Yet our founding fathers saw no reason to give people with children more votes than any other adult. To change this rule now would be to go against hundreds of years of established tradition.

Second, the idea of the vote was to establish the right of a person to express support for a candidate. Who a person supports and why is an individual choice. A child,by definition, is not considered to be developed mentally. Therefore, the child is in no position to have a reasoned opinion on a candidate. Consequently, the whole idea of an 'informed choice' gets thrown out the window.

Third, in a technical sense we are all children. None of us would be here without the efforts of our parents. So if laws were changed to allow people to cast votes based on the number of children they have, how would the term 'child' be defined. My father is in his 80's. He has 3 sons, two that are in their 50's and one(me) who is 37. Consequently, would my dad be allowed to cast 4 votes, one for him and three for his adult children? Furthermore, I have known certain often rich widow types who consider their pet dogs and cats to be their 'children'. Would these widows be able to cast votes on behalf of their pets?

Also, there is the matter of equal rights. Years ago, groups like blacks and women were denied the right to vote. It took a Civil War and then a Civil Rights and a Suffrogate Movement to put an end to such injustice. Granting people a number of votes based on the number of children they had would effectively discriminate against those who do not have children. This would effectively (and quite literally) disenfranchise a large number of people.

Democracy is not set in stone. It can only advance when reasonable ideas are tried and old inefficent methods are replaced. Basing votes on the number of children a person has is not only unreasonable but its also undermines the very idea of democracy.

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