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As parent said, there needs to be a "bright and clear line." We don't give 12-year-olds a 2/3 fractional vote because a) that introduces a ton of complexity fo

As parent said, there needs to be a "bright and clear line." We don't give 12-year-olds a 2/3 fractional vote because a) that introduces a ton of complexity for not much gain, and because b) children are essentially legally "owned" by their parents so the odds of their compulsion to vote a certain way rise dramatically. (Some people didn't want to give women suffrage last century because they figured it would just double the exact ratio of the existing men's vote tallies. And now a century later we have wives that still vote only to please their husband.) Some things might work -- I don't think this would fly in the US but maybe you could allow 19-year-olds to buy beer (not liquor) like in some states in the 70s. But how does that work for kids and sex? You want to embed the "first base, second base" junior high sex metaphor into the LAW? A 19-year-old can fondle a 16-year-old's breasts but not her genitals? Again: "bright" and "clear" have legal and common-sense context here.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago
> We don't give 12-year-olds a 2/3 fractional vote because a) that introduces a ton of complexity for not much gain Which might be true or not, but in any case does not support the claim that it is somehow inherently impossible. > and because b) children are essentially legally "owned" by their parents so the odds of their compulsion to vote a certain way rise dramatically. Well, no, children are not in any sense of the word owned by their parents. Compulsion should not be possible in any sane voting system, as elections are secret. What remains is that chances are that the younger a person, the more their parents tend to have influence over their decisionmaking, which might be a reason to limit their ability to vote accordingly. But you might have noticed that people don't switch from "no clue how to make an independent decision" to "completely mature and independent" on their 18th birthday? So, if your goal is to limit their political influence according to their independence/maturity, why is a hard cut-off at 18 the best solution? > Some people didn't want to give women suffrage last century because they figured it would just double the exact ratio of the existing men's vote tallies. Which is obviously a bullshit argument? You don't want to change who can vote because you fear that it won't change the result of the election? And the solution is to make sure that the result of the election doesn't change? Wut? > And now a century later we have wives that still vote only to please their husband. See above, secret ballot and all that. > But how does that work for kids and sex? Well, the claim was that the difference between "17 years and 364 days" and "18 years" was not a meaningful difference in reality (I would agree), but that somehow it was impossible to make a law that takes that into consideration, and so we don't have any other choice but to have a law that maps one of those to no consequences at all while the other is life-ruining. Which is obviously bullshit, as you obviously trivially can make a law that specifies that the punishment, say, linearily increases from none at 18 years to whatever the maximum is at 14 or whatever. That would be perfectly objective criteria that statistically map much better to the actual lack of maturity of the victim, without any hard cut-off where insignificant differences in the facts of the matter (and thus honest mistakes) result in massively diverging consequences.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago

> We don't give 12-year-olds a 2/3 fractional vote because a) that introduces a ton of complexity for not much gain Which might be true or not, but in any case does not support the claim that it is somehow inherently impossible. > and because b) children are essentially legally "owned" by their parents so the odds of their compulsion to vote a certain way rise dramatically. Well, no, children are not in any sense of the word owned by their parents. Compulsion should not be possible in any sane voting system, as elections are secret. What remains is that chances are that the younger a person, the more their parents tend to have influence over their decisionmaking, which might be a reason to limit their ability to vote accordingly. But you might have noticed that people don't switch from "no clue how to make an independent decision" to "completely mature and independent" on their 18th birthday? So, if your goal is to limit their political influence according to their independence/maturity, why is a hard cut-off at 18 the best solution? > Some people didn't want to give women suffrage last century because they figured it would just double the exact ratio of the existing men's vote tallies. Which is obviously a bullshit argument? You don't want to change who can vote because you fear that it won't change the result of the election? And the solution is to make sure that the result of the election doesn't change? Wut? > And now a century later we have wives that still vote only to please their husband. See above, secret ballot and all that. > But how does that work for kids and sex? Well, the claim was that the difference between "17 years and 364 days" and "18 years" was not a meaningful difference in reality (I would agree), but that somehow it was impossible to make a law that takes that into consideration, and so we don't have any other choice but to have a law that maps one of those to no consequences at all while the other is life-ruining. Which is obviously bullshit, as you obviously trivially can make a law that specifies that the punishment, say, linearily increases from none at 18 years to whatever the maximum is at 14 or whatever. That would be perfectly objective criteria that statistically map much better to the actual lack of maturity of the victim, without any hard cut-off where insignificant differences in the facts of the matter (and thus honest mistakes) result in massively diverging consequences.