[tzs]

It's a bit of a tangent, but the discussion of voting systems reminds me of another modification to voting that I sometimes think might be reasonable: weighting votes based on voter age, with the weight starting off low for the youngest voters and increasing to a peak, and then dropping off again.

What brought this on was thinking about the brexit vote over in the UK, which from what I read had very different outcomes among different age groups. It seems quite unfair that people who are likely to die before brexit is complete should have the same say as people who will be living decades under the outcome.

[opportune]

I don't think it's unreasonable for voters over a certain age to have restrictions put on their voting. My grandfather died at 94 and for the last ten years of his life he was extremely misinformed, and I don't mean just because he voted in a way that I wouldn't, or got his news elsewhere. He lost the ability to properly understand news from the television/newspaper; he would frequently ask my family if we had heard of some story and then provide a wildly inaccurate summary of it, only loosely related. This was mostly due to the progression of Alzheimer's. He was still able to vote during this time and I think even participated in the 2016 Republican primaries (at that point he was having trouble remembering even the most basic of things).

That said, removing people's right to vote is not only difficult, but can cause more problems than it solves. Implementing voting tests can codify racism/sexism/etc. Medical tests will just be gamed. And good luck ever passing these restrictions anyway, since old people are the most consistent voters out there.

[pyroinferno]

Something to think about, while young people and middle-age people have never lived under a non-EU ruled UK, old people have seen what the UK was like with the EU and not the EU around. They offer a unique perspective on this matter.

[autokad]

i dont think its a good idea to discriminate a voter on any metric: age, income, race, education, or status of health among them.

I am really surprised that anyone would even suggest it

[MaxfordAndSons]

Voting is already discriminatory based on age. We don't let 5 year olds vote, drive, or drink; why shouldn't we impose the same restrictions on say, a senile 95 year old with the mental age of 5 year old? I know why, implementing those restrictions would be far more difficult, but still, it's incorrect to say you should never discriminate based on age.

Ironically, I actually know a radical anti-ageism activist who thinks 5 year olds (and 0 year olds for that matter) should have all the same legal rights as adults.

[oh_sigh]

> Why shouldn't we impose the same restrictions on say, a senile 95 year old with the mental age of 5 year old?

In that case, you aren't discriminating based on age. Unless you think for some reason that a 95 year old with the mental capacity of a 5 year old doesn't deserve a vote, but a 40 year old with the mental capacity of a 5 year old does deserve a vote.

[MaxfordAndSons]

Good point, in the case of voting it's a matter of mental age/capacity, not physical age. But I think there are analogous situations where it makes sense to age discriminate on both end for primarily physical reasons - contact sports, voluntary exposure to high g-forces, etc.

[function_seven]

> Ironically, I actually know a radical anti-ageism activist who thinks 5 year olds (and 0 year olds for that matter) should have all the same legal rights as adults.

I'd be really curious to know that activist's views on labor, aviation, combat, pornography, driving, and marriage--as they relate to a 5-year-old. I suppose some of those categories can be answered with skill testing or whatnot, but others clearly cannot.

[ouid]

why does it start off low for the youngest?

[tzs]

I think that there are some factors that favor younger people when it comes to decision making, and some factors that favor older people.

Younger people tend to be more creative and flexible in their thinking. As they get older those tend to diminish, but they gain knowledge and experience. I suspect that until somewhere in middle age the gains from knowledge and experience beat out their thinking becoming less flexible and creative when it comes to making well thought out political decisions.

[ouid]

it's not about decision making, it's about incentives. No one is arguing for a performance based voting algorithm. A young person will eventually have to be an old person, so they must balance the interests of both. An old person will never have to be a young person again though, so they only vote in the interest of themselves.

[oh_sigh]

Because younger people have less life experience than older people?

How many times do you see articles about 18-23 year old people doing something stupid, and people come to their defense saying something along the lines of 'They're only children!'?

[ouid]

You misunderstand. if you are operating only under the assumption that your voting power should be proportional to the time you have left to live, then there's a pretty clear age-power relationship.

If you add an assumption about life experience though, You're going to have to be a lot more specific to explain how these two functions interact. why is the optimum in the middle? Why isn't it bumpy?

As soon as you start adding other factors into your weighting function, I don't know how you can be confident in the shape of your graph without being precise with your functions.

To be fair though, I think that there's a pretty good argument for inverse age weighting. If you're 20, you will eventually have to be 35, so it wouldn't make any sense for you to screw over 35 year olds. If you're 35 though, you'll never be 20 again. There is no incentive for you to not screw over 20 year olds. (unless you have kids, but at that point, everyone has equal investment in society and the premise falls apart).

[TheCoelacanth]

And on the other hand, old people's poor decisions are often blamed on their age as well. The elderly are prime targets for most scams because they are perceived as more likely to fall for them.