Hacker News Reader

Comment by s_kilk | Hacker News Reader

One huge downside would be that older people tend to skew to the more conservative end of the political spectrum, and can end up drowning out the voices of the young.

See the age breakdown of the recent Brexit vote for one example. I also remember with the Irish referendum on gay marriage in 2015, there was much worry that the older generations would swing the overall vote to "No", despite the legislation having no impact on them.

Worth thinking about: How many Brexit "Leave" voters have simply died of old age in the two months between then and now?

View on HN

> One huge downside would be that older people tend to skew to the more conservative end of the political spectrum

Only a downside if you (a) disagree with them; (b) for whatever reason, feel they are not entitled to their beliefs

> and can end up drowning out the voices of the young.

Funny how when your opinions are the majority it's democracy, and when they're not it's "voices being drowned out."

> Worth thinking about: How many Brexit "Leave" voters have simply died of old age in the two months between then and now?

It's not.

You are correct if everyone gets to vote. If the elderly with little to do all day have an easier time getting to the polls than the working class single mom supporting them, then you have a problem. I say make election day a national holiday. The AARP likely disagrees.

You don't even have to do that, I'd make July 4th election day in the states for example.

While I don't particularly like the AARP, they haven't said anything against making voting day a national holiday. And with voting by mail it's totally unnecessary anyway. In CA now even postage is free so there are zero obstacles preventing the working class from voting.

Except there are issues with it. For example, I ordered my ballot and never received it. Fortunately I work somewhere with a flexible enough schedule that I could vote in person, but it isn't reliable enough for me.

There is really no compelling argument I can think of for why there shouldn't be a federal holiday to vote, unless you are arguing about lost productivity as a business owner or policy changes from more people of different demographics voting. Neither are compelling arguments.

"feel they are not entitled to their beliefs"

When there's polarization in a society where a majority of population out-vote a minority on every proposal, said minority has all motivation to withdraw from public politics and secede.

Imagine a country with 60% big-endians and 40% little-endians. Big-endians own every president, every senate and every vote they care to win. Little-endians have no sensible choice but to split into their own country where they'll be a majority, perhaps with civil war and ethnic cleansings in the process.

This situation has been engineered in many countries: the gerrymander (great etymology btw). Combined with other techniques to disenfranchise voters (making it difficult to register to vote, voter ID charades, not enforcing that employers give time to vote) it is very effective in making the minority believe it is 'pointless' for them to vote.

The first past the post system strongly encourages this sort of manipulation. If electorates were made larger and multiple candidates elected for each then this problem would disappear, but established parties would never allow that to occur.

Edit: it has become evident recently that the HN downvote system cannot cope with political discussions, as evidenced by your post being killed. I would suggest that posts with political content have up and down votes shown, rather than the sum being applied to modify visibility. As it is, the downvotes are just "I don't want you to be able to express your ideas."

Trouble is the elderly have pensions, often backed by the state, and therefore are (or at least feel) immune to the financial consequences of their decisions.

Congratulations on equating being conservative with being wrong. (In saying conservative voting = downside)

I think I am fairly liberal, but in being objective I know I could very well be wrong.

Just to put the counter point. If conservative ideals are correct, then older people voting more would be a huge UPSIDE.

I agree that the older voting bloc causes a problem, but it's not because they are conservative, it's because they're retired and will continue to try to vote more benefits for themselves while removing benefits from others.

But to say it's a problem because they are conservative? You're just saying people that agree with you are right and people who disagree are wrong. It's closeminded.

>One huge downside would be that older people tend to skew to the more conservative end of the political spectrum, and can end up drowning out the voices of the young.

This is actually not true [0]

[0]http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/15/getting-more-li...

Your citation actually supports that claim:

" At any given time older people are likely to be more conservative than contemporaneous young people. But relative to themselves as young people, today’s older folks have generally become more liberal than they once were."

It seems your thinking of the latter half of that quote, but the claim was regarding the first half.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com