Comment by femto | Hacker News Reader

Comment by femto | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps the incongruity isn't that a 14-year old is running for office, but that a 14-year old can't vote? A 14-year old has the maturity to run for office, but is judged to be too immature to vote? There is a cohort of children who are already more mature than a lot of adults. Most of the arguments about children being incapable of voting were once applied to women and aborigines. Maybe the rules should be that if a child is capable of engaging with the political process by registering to vote then they are capable of voting?

Lack of representation means politicians care about children only to the extent required to get a parental vote. Take the lot of a child in my country (Australia):

* Childcare is a political football. The primary aim of the system is to allow parents to work rather then provide the best environment for children. Excellence is a result of individual centres rather than a product of the system.

* Children are taxed at 45%. If you want to prevent parents from putting investments in children's names, write laws about parents exploiting their children rather than penalising the child.

* Schools are a political football, with politicians debating funding, testing regimes and curriculum and the children nowhere to be heard.

* Old men (and a few old women) are making decisions that will affect the world long after they are dead. The currently disenfranchised children are the ones who are going to be stuck with the mess.

Adults wouldn't (and don't) put up with it, so why should children?

This is a common argument in the UK regarding Brexit. Enough people have turned 18 already since the 2016 referendum to outnumber Leave's tiny winning margin.

One argument I've heard against this is that kids are usually wards of their parents, sadly giving the parents a large lever to influence their child's vote.

I had to re-read your comment to realise that I was about to state the same thing. Didn't tweak on the meaning of ward initially.

The same arguments could be applied to any child/parent relationship. How many adult children are under the influence of their parents? The ballot is secret, so a child would be free to vote as they wish. Children would have to be treated as any other voter meaning parents should not be allowed to be in the polling booth with their children.

This is definitely the case here in Spain. I've been to the voting centers a few times and they have tables outside the voting rooms with piles of voting slips similar to[0]. You see families come in and the younger members have no ability to secretly vote for whom they desire as the slip you pick is for a party and you are selecting that in front of anyone else that is there.

Being from the UK where we mark who we are voting for in a private booth, on a slip with all candidates [1] fold the paper in half so no one can see and post that into a box, the Spanish system makes me uncomfortable. Let alone that people mess with the stacks of slips, hiding smaller party's slips under other piles…

[0] https://c8.alamy.com/comp/KN3EHD/a-hand-pick-a-voting-paper-... [1] https://www.unlockthelaw.co.uk/images/Ballot_Papers_General_...

Certainly teenagers, especially older ones (such as 16 or 17 year olds), are more than capable of having political views diametrically opposed to their parents.

I can remember as a 17 year old trying to convince my Dad to vote a certain way in a referendum which I myself was too young to vote in, and he ended up voting the way I wanted him to (although, it is entirely possible that he might have still voted that way even without my input.) I think my reasons for wanting to vote that way (despite not being allowed to) were likely better informed and better thought-out than those of most of the voters who were old enough to vote.

When i was 18 my dad gave me the envelope himself. Which I promptly turned to shreds and instead voted what I wanted.

Fun fact: The exact same argument was used to argue against women's suffrage. Apparently the husband would have too large an influence.

This is fascinating - I'm not particularly sold on this line of reasoning to begin with, having both secret balloting and the privilege to have been able to dramatically disagree with my parents politically as a child. Certainly by high school the majority of my classmates were qualified to vote.

Yes and I wonder if media consumers should lose the right to vote too, since their opinions will often be strongly influenced by the media that they read - effectively Murdoch has millions of votes even though he isn't a citizen of this country any more. Surely the only independent people are the MP's themselves, and so they should be able to vote for whomever they please.

Would be an interesting study to conduct, most families I know vote similar but is that actually the case and does family influence how you vote or does who you vote for influence who you live with as family?

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