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hardcore_gamer

Is age-weighted-voting a good idea?

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I am starting to lean towards the idea that voting should be aged weighted. There are just too many people in the younger generations that don't give a fuck about anything and will just vote for any bullshit that sounds amusing to them.

Perfect example: http://twistedsifter.com/2012/11/jon-gnarr-mayor-reykjavik-world-most-interesting/

Oh sure, he may be funny. But being funny does NOTHING to actually help you govern an actual city! His supporters were mostly the younger people, so they can be blamed for what was basically 4 years of anarchistic rule in the capital. People who acually cared about politics however, weren't as amused by his 4 years of government.

And thus I suggest a new system of age-weighted-voting. The way it would work is that when you become 18 your vote counts as 1 vote, and then with every extra decade it counts as one more. For example:

18: 1
28: 2
38: 3
48: 4
etc.

In this way, peoples political power would be in proportion to both their life experience and how much they actually have to lose from bad governing (older people typically have more property and wealth, and thus have more reason to care about what the government does so they don't get fucked).

EDIT: Another thing I forgot to mention. Wealth and property. If voting is weighted based on age then people don't have to fear that politicians or the younger generations will rob them once they have served their purpose. People have more to lose as they are older and thus it is fair that they have a greater say.

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My step dad is a mayor as I've mentioned before here. He's running for a bigger office because his party is forcing him. The party is trying to push him to a younger audience and I personally believe the youngers won't vote in a midterm election. They spent thousands of dollars in an online campaign for a website that was never built.

The olders vote in droves. If anything to even up the voting measure younger votes should be weighted more to balance it out.

Having a weighted system to voting is an insult. Everyone's vote should count as much as an 18 year old's or a 64 year old's. There are clueless 64 year olds just as there are clueless 18 year olds. To balance out the clueless people there are those that care and study politicians.

Why not have a 'how would you rate this politician' voting system? This politician sucks = 1 rating, man I like that politician he's a 9. But that politician is kinda eh, she gets a 7.

In the end, I'm not sure it matters.

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As Geo said, a weighted system is insulting. I'll add that I even find such an idea dangerous as its implementation could be abused.

There are many young people who vote wisely, as there are many older voters who vote stupidly. To give an example in American politics, I'd much rather see a 25 year old EFF follower at the polls than an avid 75 year old Fox News viewer.

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What a ridiculous, primitive idea! Valuing the rich? That would do nothing but usher in a world where even less is accomplished in favour of preserving the wealth of the rich.

Good decisions come from those of all ages. Most young people may be idiots, but most old people are still idiots who just happen to be even more scared of the world. Like geo said, we need more young voters, not fewer. Like everyone said, the very idea my vote would count less than that of my mom's drunk boyfriend is an insult to me, democracy, good governance, and civilization itself!

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Aliotroph? said:

What a ridiculous, primitive idea! Valuing the rich? That would do nothing but usher in a world where even less is accomplished in favour of preserving the wealth of the rich.


I wasn't aware that old=rich. The old have more money THAN the young. But this doesn't make them all rich.

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You probably wouldn't personally walk up to your neighbor and demand they give you money under threat of force. Voting outsources theft to a 3rd party politician to do this indirectly under the guise of taxes.

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Ideally, I would prefer that the right to vote be based on academic achievement. But there are too many variables that would make it an unfair system as well. Usually people from more stable and/or affluent homes tend to do better in school.

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I don't find the idea far-fetched at all, but not implemented like hardcore gamer proposed. The "weight" should be relative to one's educational and working status, rather than age.

This may sound elitist at first, but it might be a one-way street for future democracies, as the population ages, unemployment will rise and less working-class people will have to support an ever-growing population of pensioners and unemployed (at least in countries where the pension and welfare system works like a Ponzi scheme).

At some point, there will be more pensioners and welfare-dependants than working people, and it's obvious that they don't have common interests: pensioners will vote for whoever raises pensions and handouts, which will cause tax raises and salary reductions from working people. If voting power is left at one vote per person, it's quite obvious how it will end up.

Basically, weighted voting should be used to counterbalance the phenomenon of Grey Power, by preventing a (by and large) non-productive part of society decide monetary policy. This had been brought up again in the Unpopular Opinions thread anyway.

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Sodaholic said:

As Geo said, a weighted system is insulting. I'll add that I even find such an idea dangerous as its implementation could be abused.

There are many young people who vote wisely, as there are many older voters who vote stupidly. To give an example in American politics, I'd much rather see a 25 year old EFF follower at the polls than an avid 75 year old Fox News viewer.


this exactly

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hardcore_gamer said:

I wasn't aware that old=rich. The old have more money THAN the young. But this doesn't make them all rich.


Wages, salaries, and investments all accrue value over time. If you haven't even lived long enough to reap the benefits of of your financial decisions, you're probably not old.

Valuing the rich.

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Kontra Kommando said:

Ideally, I would prefer that the right to vote be based on academic achievement.

Some of the most diluted people are from academia.

EDIT: Spellchecker strikes again.

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hardcore_gamer said:

18: 1
28: 2
38: 3
48: 4
etc.

The problem many jurisdictions face is that not enough young people are voting about the issues that should concern them. A system like this would give them even less reason to vote.

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The elderly tend to be a lot more conservative than the young, so if what you want is to make sure leftist parties never get a snowball's chance in hell of scoring any electoral victory, no matter how minor, then yes it is a good idea.

Also your proposed system means that setups where you have volunteers from a party send a minibus to the nearby retirement home to drive all the elderly, often senile and usually easy to influence residents to the voting bureau, while explaining them on the way which candidate to vote for, would be even more useful now. Similarly for the setup where you make dead people vote, this kind of fraud becomes even more interesting when dead grandma's vote is worth 10 times that of a youngster's.

Finally, look at life expectancy by social category. Surprise surprise, the working poor don't get to benefit from their retirement as long as the wealthy rentiers.

To conclude, your aims would be simpler to achieve by merely denying voting rights to anyone under 60 and anyone who is not a millionaire. You'd get the same end result and at least you wouldn't be hypocritical about it.

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40oz said:

Wages, salaries, and investments all accrue value over time. If you haven't even lived long enough to reap the benefits of of your financial decisions, you're probably not old.

Valuing the rich.


I am very well aware that older people have more money. But I find it odd that you believe this is the same as begin "rich". What exactly is rich to you? I for one consider people like Bill Gates to be rich because he owns billions of dollars. Not people like my grandpa simply because he affords to live in his own house.

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I've seen plenty of discussions about electoral reform before, but never anything this ludicrous. If anything you should be looking to reform the people being voted for, not the ones doing the voting.

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You see, the first objective is to remove the annoying principle that citizens are equal before the law. Once you get a precedent for having some citizens more equal than others, then the doorway is open for a proper caste system.

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Aliotroph? said:

What a ridiculous, primitive idea! Valuing the rich? That would do nothing but usher in a world where even less is accomplished in favour of preserving the wealth of the rich.

Good decisions come from those of all ages. Most young people may be idiots, but most old people are still idiots who just happen to be even more scared of the world. Like geo said, we need more young voters, not fewer.


Good point there, valuing the rich will not end well and old people may tend to be more afraid of the world.
Most young people may be stupid but that's natural, because they still haven't matured enough yet, while old people are idiots because are more careless and are lazy.

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I found this article to be amusing and think it is relevant here:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/millennials-economics-voting-clueless-kids-these-days/374427/

Gez said:

You see, the first objective is to remove the annoying principle that citizens are equal before the law. Once you get a precedent for having some citizens more equal than others, then the doorway is open for a proper caste system.


Except that this is not what age based voting does. Everybody ages. Thus everyone has the same power overall throughout their life. Thus everyone is treated the same.

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ITT: young people tell us young people are the best people, while old people can't be trusted because they'll only think of old people

I love the idea tacitly accepted here, that under a certain age we're not fit to vote, but hit eighteen (or w/e is the legal age in your country)? Boom! You're bestowed with all the knowledge in the world. At 17 you were dumb as a baby, at 18 you're Einstein reincarnated.

Face it, the average 60 years old is wiser than the average 18 years old, on account of having lived just a little bit longer and experienced more stuff. Duh. Altruism increases with age, studies have proved this time and again. If it ever needed to be, as the concept should be common sense to anyone but ideologues with the intent to scapegoat and dehumanize a different class for their own benefit.

"Everyone is a maniac but me! They only look for themselves, those animals! You know they are like that because I told you so! Listen to me because I'm smart and selfless, and you know I'm smart and selfless because I told you I am!"

FeEeeEeeAaaAAr the oOold people. They smell funny. They don't like grindcore or dubstep or hipdancefunkstyle or whatever new music genre name we've concocted last weekend. They're all either rich bastards with monocles conspiring to oppress us (they kinda suck at it because here we are speaking freely against them, but that must be because they're so dumb and we're so smart), or decrepit shells staring in the void in their retirement homes (how they all get into these retirement homes I don't know. Have you seen the going rates these days? Holy crap. It's a good thing all old people are millionaires). It's like the turn 18, turn genius thing. The second you hit the big 6-0, your teeth fall out in unison and a wheelchair materializes out of hammerspace just in time to catch you as your suddenly failing legs give way. I know all this because I've watched that Wall Street movie once, what do you mean "actually interact with the people I'm talking about"? Eww, I might catch old guy cooties.

Is the OP a good idea? No. Is there any validity to the arguments against it in this topic? No (except for Maes).

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Phml is right (for once :p), some of the posts hating on old people sound like they want the exact opposite and overvalue young people, heh. I don't agree with the meritocracy/rule of the educated/gifted/whatever though. Any of these reform attempts seek only one thing: to shift the balance towards one's agenda. If the world is more like I want it, it's a better and fairer world, right? Democracy only works if it is democratic, so hands off.

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Kontra Kommando said:

But what kind of people do you get that have no education?


Fucking lol. Education does not make dumb people smart. It just gives stupid people more creative ways to destory them self's and others.

An educated idiot is still an idiot.

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hardcore_gamer said:

Except that this is not what age based voting does. Everybody ages. Thus everyone has the same power overall throughout their life. Thus everyone is treated the same.

Not everybody has the same lifespan.

Here's a good article for everyone in this thread.
http://aeon.co/magazine/health/will-new-drugs-mean-the-rich-live-to-120-and-the-poor-die-at-60/

And here's some articles in French just for Phml:
http://elections.lefigaro.fr/flash-presidentielle/2012/05/06/97006-20120506FILWWW00135-corse-l-ump-fait-voter-des-morts-selon-le-ps.php
http://www.europe1.fr/politique/un-candidat-peut-il-acheminer-des-electeurs-vers-un-bureau-de-vote-1678505

Sending buses to retirement homes to transport old people to voting bureaus: it's something that exists and that is often suspected of being abused

Voting fraud where you make people vote even though they're dead: also something that has happened

Give a centenarian ten times the voting power of a youngster and you should be able to see how these things become all the more profitable and tempting.

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Gez said:

Not everybody has the same lifespan.


If you blow your life away on non-sense which causes you to die at 50 then this is your failure, and not other peoples. Also, how many people become like a 100 years old anyway?

EDIT: That article you linked is also full of bias. 120 years old, reall?

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Perhaps only male landowners should be able to vote. Since its their taxes. Well now we're taxed on everything.

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I haven't read the thread but I would still like to say that this is a terrible idea because working retail has showed me that too many old people are fucking retarded. Not like "I can't use my computer" retarded either.

EDIT: I read the thread and added some afterthoughts. My point still stands, but I'm also probably just grumpy right now.

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What I see from this idea of yours is Baby Boomers Mk II coming along and ruining shit. Younger generations would have to make up for exploitation during those years by exploiting the next young generation that comes along after they've already aged. The young in a society need to be able to get an education, get a stable job or pursue other opportunities, and all these things lead to a stable future for that society if not a more prosperous one. That just can't really happen if the society they live in is designed to work against them. By the time they reach an age where they're not longer being booted in the crotch by their system, that time to build up skills and resources and all that has already passed. It wouldn't happen overnight, might work for a few generations, but I'm pretty sure things would start coming apart.

That and the justification for it is ridiculous anyways. It's not like age makes people lose their sense of greed, and it doesn't necessarily make them smarter. There's stupid people of all ages, and it's not fixed that easily.

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hardcore_gamer said:

Fucking lol. Education does not make dumb people smart. It just gives stupid people more creative ways to destory them self's and others.

An educated idiot is still an idiot.



Uhhh great logic there... certainly not as iron-clad as your ageism.

So what, an uneducated idiot is worse off.

Education may not absolutely confirm high intelligence, but it at least gives a strong suggestion to the probability to their intelligence.

If you go to a job interview, and are competing against people with degrees, you'll probably not get the position. What do you think they're going to say; "congratulations, you're fucking retarded, you've got the job"?

Would you trust a doctor that never went to medical school?

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Just in case my point didn't come across in my original post, I didn't say less intelligent - I said deluded (diluted). The fact remains that the most educated person may look at the world through a lens that can't see the world beyond their upbringing. Will a person who is educated in economics try and fix our fractured economy or further sell-out our industries so his corporate buddies can make a bigger buck? Will the person who has a high education in social studies sink more money into hippie, back-patting social programs instead of trying to fix our economy so people don't have to be on welfare.

Anyway, even the biggest idiot should have the right to vote in the same manor as someone with a higher degree of intelligence.

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