One Child, One Vote?

Kotke links to a horrible sounding idea:

“Juan Enriquez had a nice idea for rebalancing the priorities in the voting booth: proxy votes for parents of children under 18. That is, if my wife and I have two kids, the family gets four votes, not two.”

Bad #1: Gives people with large families a disproportionate vote.

Bad #2: Creates political incentives to have larger families.

Bad #3: Far too many people are lousy at judging their political best interests (ie, all the people who vote for policies that benefit people in much higher income brackets because they like to imagine they’ll be fat cat’s someday, even though most never will). How are we better served by giving fools even more votes to shoot themselves in the foot with than they already have?

3 thoughts on “One Child, One Vote?

  1. Pablo

    BAD #1: NO! It gives each citizen a voice. In fact: the current situation gives “large families” less leverage for their vote(s). So while the vote-value of a single homosexual has 100% strength, the vote-value of a single mother with two “non-voting” children only maintains a value of 33%.

    BAD #2: Seriously… anyone with more than two neurons knows that although this might sound true, in practice it makes no sense. Please afford two minutes to your thought process, draw a time-line, and realize BAD #2 is a baseless claim.

    BAD #3: Well, now, let’s take the right of suffrage away from people 80 years and older away, and while we are at it, let’s take the voting right away from all those that didn’t attend college since they are not enlightened…

    I invite you to take a look at the Hidden Penalty: ( edit: bye bye, link ) for a better understanding on why every citizen (debatably, even some in the womb) should have the right to vote.

  2. eas Post author

    I suggest you need a better strategy for advocating your position than posting thinly veiled appeals to homophobia, insults, exaggerations, strawmen and other logical fallacies on the blogs of your critics.

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