The United Kingdom’s Labour Party, in its 2024 Manifesto, promises to expand the franchise to 16- and 17-year-olds, lowering the age threshold from the current 18 years, with the expectation that the change will ‘increase the engagement’ of the realm’s younger subjects. And with Labour’s vast new majority in the House of Commons, there’s every reason to expect they’ll succeed in keeping their promise (though Prime Minister Keir Starmer has indicated he will initially prioritize economic measures).
Cynics may suspect the intent of such a change is to benefit from the bigger youth vote, which typically favors Labour candidates. Labour, however, insists that giving younger voters the right to vote will increase the new voters’ interest in politics—though it is never explained exactly why an increase in youthful engagement with political matters is so important as to warrant changing the law. If the youth are more interested in football clubs, pop music, and school studies than Keir Starmer or Rishi Sunak, why not leave them be?
Of course, it’s well-established that the brains of adolescents aren’t fully-formed or developed, and it can hardly be argued that adolescents possess the breadth of education in history, civics, logic, and rhetoric obtained (at least, purportedly) by adults. Hence the capacity to think and reason, so important in determining the best course of public affairs, is hampered in 16- and 17-year-olds. There is, then, perhaps a stronger argument for withholding the franchise for 18- to 20-years-olds, than there is for extending it to 16- and 17-year-olds. But of course, intelligence is not considered in determining the rights and privileges due a subject of the British Crown, which principle may or may not apply when considering the expansion of those rights and privileges, such as extending the franchise. And, of course, should any British youth be so advantaged as to have a job, or should a youth come into possession of real property, said youth will certainly not be exempt from the duty to pay taxes.
While 16- and 17-year-olds may lack the capacity to reason as well as adults, they nevertheless do have interests in the outcomes of public policy decisions. Their lives, as much as any adult’s, will be affected by choices made in the House of Commons, and, particularly with respect to public debt (perhaps even more so), because they presumably have more years ahead of them during which they will be made to pay the taxes to cover the costs of debt. In fact, the same can be said for all children. Children’s lives are just as affected by crime and they are often the most innocent of its victims, by immigration that threatens their culture and by social policies that weaken their families. The murder of a child presumably steals more years than that of an adult. Of course, children have policy interests, but the question then becomes how best to care for those interests.
For a variety of reasons, including their limited ability to reason, along with their limited ability to give consent—especially where the ‘consent of the governed’ is a linchpin of the polity—children have generally been denied the franchise. It’s often been assumed that parents will use their votes in the best interest of their children, so no representation is necessary. Parents will look after them. But, when children under eighteen account for over 20% of the population, as is the case in the United Kingdom, how effective can this mitigation be? When a family of four, two adults and two children, have the same number of votes as two single and childless adults, the voting power of the family of four is significantly diminished, and the voices of the two children ignored entirely. Currently, a full one-fifth of the British population goes unheard.
With the family already so significantly weakened politically, it perhaps comes as little surprise that anti-family policies take root and come to dominate the policy sphere. Those without children will naturally vote to secure their own interests, and because this demographic wields disproportionate voting power, their interests will more often dominate election results. The results are the current policies that work to subvert the family wherever possible, including tax policies that punish single-earner households, social policies that favor state daycare programs for young children in place of parental care, and economic policies that have left 30% of all British children in poverty.
But if children are too young to reason and thus to vote, the solution is rather obviously to provide their parents or legal guardians with a proxy vote. Such persons are already granted authority in the other legal and social aspects of children’s lives, and it naturally resolves the question of representation. Proxy voting has a history in Great Britain, providing a continuity with the realm’s traditions. Exactly how this authority is divided between two parents can be determined at a local level, but prior proposals included giving an additional half-vote to each custodial parent or guardian for each child, or a full additional vote per child where a single person holds custodial authority.
This concept of proxy voting by parents, sometimes referred to as ‘Demeny voting,’ after the Hungarian economics professor Paul Demeny, who proposed such a system in 1986, is not without precedent. In fact, both Germany and Hungary considered—but rejected—granting additional votes to those with children as recently as 2008 and 2011, respectively. Following the First World War, Tunisia and Morocco—both protectorates of France at the time—gave the fathers of four or more children an additional vote in elections. Similar concepts had been introduced, though never implemented, in the rather chaotic French politics of 1848 and 1871. And while not categorized as proxy voting, in much of the 19th and early 20th century, graduates of Oxford and Cambridge could vote twice in United Kingdom elections, in recognition of their academic success—proof that the concept of additional votes for one voter is not unprecedented. Of course, proxy voting doesn’t even provide an extra vote to a voter, but instead simply enables the vote of a citizen unable to otherwise vote.
If Labour is concerned for the voting rights of 16- and 17-year-olds, then surely they would be just as concerned for the rights of those even younger. Why should a 16-year-old have more rights than a 15-year-old? Their minds are still undeveloped; they, like the 15-year-old, have not completed their education; and they nearly possess all the same deficiencies as someone a year younger. The logic doesn’t hold—unless and until it’s recognized that all children have voting rights (and concomitant responsibilities), held in proxy by their parents or guardians.
The Left’s objection lies in that parents tend to be older, and the older a voter is, the more statistically likely that voter is to vote Tory. So, as it currently stands, we’re likely to see the voting age threshold drop, with more ignorant voters as the inevitable result, before we see the rights of children everywhere recognized.
