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Real democracy? Hungary to give mothers an extra vote for each child
- lupatus 15y agoThis seems to go against the principles of feminism and the women's suffrage movements where equality was the goal. Instead it would give mothers a privileged position in Hungarian society at the expense of males and women without children. If this is acceptable to Hungarian society, why were previous privileged classes, such as landowners or aristocrats or male heads-of-household or Communist party leaders, morally wrong and subsequently vilified? If this passes, I expect that that in a few decades, or less, mothers will be vilified and used as scapegoats for whatever social ills ail Hungary simply because they would be the privileged class in power.
- abeld 15y agoThis idea was scrapped after some public polling, see: http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Findex.hu%2Fbelfold%2F2011%2F03%2F28%2Forban_meg_harcol_a_csaladi_szavazatert%2F&act=url http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&h... Some blame the result of the polls on fears that the idea would give extra votes to the roma minority, who, on average, have more kids and larger families than the non-roma. Some more background info: The population of Hungary is shrinking, which will cause big problems after some decades with regard to funding pensions and such (as you will have a shrinking working population having to finance the pensions of a growing populations of pensioners). Also, the retired pensioners form a large and easily mobilized voting force which means that politicians are forced to pander to their interest by raising pensions and such. The plan to allow children to vote (either directly or by giving extra votes to their parents) would help somewhat with both issues.