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From: keduh@hogpd.UUCP (D.HUDEK)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: re: voting
Message-ID: <277@hogpd.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 17-Feb-84 10:24:27 EST
Article-I.D.: hogpd.277
Posted: Fri Feb 17 10:24:27 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 18-Feb-84 01:47:44 EST
Lines: 66

<< I can't think of anything to say, {sob!} >>

Sophie Quigley brought up some interesting points concerning
the vote allotment schemes under consideration. She mentioned
alloting votes for "bringing up children" which "...seems to
be one of the hardest things to do on earth, yet nobody has
mentioned it yet." I agree that it may very well be one of
the hardest things to do properly and in the long run, may
be the most important thing we can do.

Now, the basic premise underlying the whole voting scheme is
to allow those who seem to be on the ball to have a greater say
in government. Presumably, those who can succcessfully raise
their children do have a lot of common (or uncommon! ) sense
and should therefore be allotted more votes.

The problem is how you could measure the performance
of parents and allot more votes to those who seem to know what
they're doing. Should the father or mother receive more votes---
possibly would be determined by who spends the most time with the
child--- but then you run into the problem of "quality" vs
"quantity" time and who really has the greatest positive impact
on the child?  Also, just how do you measure the quality of
child-rearing ? That's definitely a non-trivial task! 
It might be easier to look at the other side 
of the question and determine what constitutes
a "poor" job of child-rearing. If those negative qualities were
lacking, then positive qualities are assumed and someone gets
more votes. Negative qualities could be along the lines of---
arrest/conviction record (if the kid mugs old people or is
a vandal or shoplifts, etc.), what else ????

Possibly one would wait and see how the child turned out
before alloting the votes---- one way would be to give
the parents as many additional votes as the children acquire.
In other words, the child grows up and gets a High School
education --the child gets a vote, and so do each of his/her
parents, etc. It could be a nice recursive relationship,
after all, the whole voting scheme was to pick out "responsible"
members of society, so why not use it as the parenting criteria ?
Parents who can raise many children who turn out to be contributing
members of society must be really on the ball, so they should get
a larger say in what goes on.

As to the other comment that " all the criteria that have been
put forward for deciding who is worthy of voting can be attacked
by some very simple insults all ending with 'ist' ", I agree.
The question is whether the attacks have any merit or not.
I am coming to the conclusion that they would not.
[as an aside, one could attack the current voting allotment
scheme in the US (those under 18 are denied the vote) as being
anti-young-people-ist or some such. It's just our current
plan to give the vote to those seen as "responsible" and
young persons under 18 are currently deemed not to be "responsible"
in this context.]



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