In a recent viral clip on Ross Douthat’s podcast, Yale Law School professor Sam Moyn said he thought we should weight the votes of young people (18-29-year-olds) extra at the polls because they best represent the interests of non-voting children. Douthat ridiculed the proposal as “daft,” and asked why parents shouldn’t be allowed to vote on behalf of their children instead? Moyn said that the interests of the 18-29 cohort are more aligned with children and that we don’t want to hold children “hostage” to their parents.
On the Rationally BASED podcast, we’re fortunate that our very own Joshua Kleinfeld is a leading expert on the idea of giving parents the power to vote on behalf of their children. He wrote a paper about it with Harvard Law School’s Stephen Sachs. On today’s episode, we talk all about it:
What Kathryn and I found most persuasive is that children are already counted for purposes of electoral representation and political power. Connecticut has an entire additional house seat because of the number of children who live there. So Connecticut gets more political power. But who is wielding that power? Not the children or their parents! It’s nonparents voters who are most politically powerful.
In other words, children are already virtually represented — they’re just represented by nonparents whose interests are not at all aligned with their interests.
It seems to me that this is very similar to the situation of the American Revolution. The problem with “virtual representation” was that it couldn’t plausibly be said that someone in England really understood much about the situation in America or had the same interests as Americans. So we needed actual representation (and so the revolution came).
Here, similarly, children are already virtually represented—but by all the wrong people. So what they need is something like “actual” representation, that is, letting the people most intimately concerned with their actual interests cast real votes on their behalf.
I found that persuasive. Do you? Take a listen. And please like and subscribe if you haven’t already, and consider leaving us a review on Apple or Spotify as well.
Assigning more political power to parents with children seventeen and under seems to be a forward looking idea because children are the future. Parents generally have substantial investments in their children’s success in attaining the true goals in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness… both in this life and in the life to come. “How will it all end?” is a very important question. If I am alone my focus may be on myself, but if I am a parent my focus is extended to include my family. If a child of GOD, extended to the family of GOD. This seems good.
I love this idea and your podcast.