Saturday, 19 February 2022

Fairer Franchise

Democracy may be the best of a bad bunch of forms of government, but can be very regressive. The grey brigade (to which I belong) is a powerful voting lobby. A political party that seeks to redress the grossly unfair share of Government resources it receives (see previous post) does so at its peril. A young voter may have 60 or more years of life ahead of them whereas I can expect to live only another 6 years on average. It surely cannot be just that my vote carries equal weight in determining my 18-year-old son's future.

I have a simple remedy to reduce my power at the ballot box as I get older and make it more likely that future Governments will be motivated to study the interests of younger generations. The crosses of electors between the ages of 18 and 50 (say) would count as one full vote. Thereafter the weight our votes would tapered in a linear fashion down to zero for anyone over 100. Thus, for example, the vote of someone aged 75 would carry only half the weight of of the vote of someone of 50 or under.

It has to be admitted, however, that since the electoral success of the Conservative party depends heavily on the grey vote, my modest proposal will have to wait for a more progressive alliance to take it up.


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