Against a minimum voting age

Abstract

A minimum voting age is defended as the most effective and least disrespectful means of ensuring all members of an electorate are sufficiently competent to vote. Whilst it may be reasonable to require competency from voters, a minimum voting age should be rejected because its view of competence is unreasonably controversial, it is incapable of defining a clear threshold of sufficiency and an alternative test is available which treats children more respectfully. This alternative is a procedural test for minimum electoral competence. A procedural test for minimum electoral competence also succeeds in fulfilling adults’ duties to promote children’s rational and moral engagement with democracy. A minimum voting age should therefore be rejected, all things considered. A procedural test for minimum literacy and independent voting is the most justified means to ensure competency from voters and to promote the democratic agency of children.

Keywords:

• child-citizenship
• child-suffrage
• minimum voting age
• electoral competence

Acknowledgement

I am grateful to audiences at the London School of Economics, the University of Leicester, the ‘Margins of Citizenship’ conference, and to John Charvet and Jonathan Seglow for written comments on previous drafts. This research was supported by an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Small Research Grant RES-000-22-3228 which I acknowledge gratefully.

Notes

At the time of going to press, Philip Cook is now affiliated with the University of Edinburgh.

1. Robert Dahl and Albert Weale cast children’s disenfranchisement in terms of the problem of the constitution of the demos: (Dahl 1989, p. 129; Weale 2007, pp. 207–217)

2. For a canonical statement of the all affected interests view see (Goodin 2007).

3. On the imaginative representation of others’ point of view in democratic deliberation and decision see (Goodin 2003, pp. 169–193). For an example of a defence of fiduciary representation of children’s interests through a statutory ombudsman, see (E. Cohen 2005). On the role and history of children’s advocates see (Flekkøy 2002).

4. I leave aside the question of which children should be included in the franchise, and assume that the boundaries of the demos are established justly.

5. I accept, for the sake of this argument, that we may be able to give a determinate measurement of the quality of our democratic outcomes according to some standard such as justice, truth, common agreement etc.

6. I follow Clayton’s interpretation of Cohen’s argument regarding the subject of justice: justice concerns those institutions and practices that are of profound importance over children’s lives, not only those that are pervasive and coercive in effect (Clayton 2006, p. 37) and (G. A. Cohen 1997).

7. Baysian reasoning refers to the process by which we update our beliefs in the light of new evidence. As Goodin argues, if votes are evidence of other peoples’ rational beliefs, the decisions of the majority provide important evidence in the process of reflection and updating of our beliefs (Goodin 2003, pp. 109–121).

8. My focus here is on adults’ indirect institutional duties of appraisal respect to child-citizens, and how the institution of voting fulfils these. I leave aside further discussion of the direct duties adults have towards the development of democratic citizenship in children, but it seems plausible that adults would have duties to promote the Baysian role of democracy by encouraging discussion and reflection on a child’s vote and the outcome of elections.

9. Justice requires the polity to provide such forms in all languages spoken in the polity, as otherwise this would amount to a substantive test of expertise in a particular language.