I think it’s time we evolve past the arbitrarily chosen age limit for stuff like voting, parental consent ect. But my focus today is going to be on voting.
First we must try to understand why and how the magic ’21/ 18 year old rule.4
It all starts with society acknowledging that not every member of society should have the right to vote. Some were deemed A) ‘mentally unsound’. Others were labelled as B) criminals and barred from voting too. The last, and largest group people decided to bar were C) ‘kids’.
Now, before we explore the ban on kids, we must clearly understand one thing. Ever type of person who got barred from voting, is a result of thetyranny of the majority. The majority decided that groups A, B and C were ‘not fit to vote’ and institutionalized mechanisms to justify and prevent them from voting. We are taught from a young age that it alright to bar certain members of society from voting- and that it’s the right thing to do even though the decisions made by voters affects all members of society- even those barred.
Now let’s bring the focus back to the voting age. So typically, we bar kids from voting because we feel that they are not mature enough and have yet to accumulate enough critical thinking and information to make an informed decision.
This, perhaps is fair. However, why are we using a metric as stupid and cave-man as age to determine whether a youth has matured and acquired the necesary knowledge and thinking ability that is expected of a voter?
What if a child was in a coma for 4 years of his childhood. When he reaches 21, he has magically acquired the necessary state of mind as his peers who spent a full 21 years consciously developing?
And even then, it’s so silly to assume that everyone acquires the necessary intellectual maturity and ability by the same time. I have met 40 year old people who have little or no political awareness or critical thinking.
What exactly are we looking for in a voter?
It is a good time to think about the qualities we are looking for in a voter. The qualities that we shallowly believe that a 21 year old will magically acquire by virtue of age.
1. Critical Thinking
2. Know about local Politics
3. Know about Global Politics (To learn from others mistakes ect.)
4. Be Rational
5. Genuinely care for the state/ Loyalty
Okay, so these are just starter qualities. I am sure a more elaborate analyses could be done. But for the point I am trying to make, these will suffice.
From the few (main) qualities we see above, we can begin to see how silly it is to use something as arbitrary as age to verify if an individual has acquired some of these qualities.
A more relevant metric is required.
But what should t his metric be? How should it be implemented? Honestly, I do not have a good idea. I mean how do you quantitatively assess qualities such as loyalty to the country?
I propose that an academic commission be set us to develop a feasible assessment for Singaporean. However, in the interim, I suggest that we immediately evolve behind the arbitrary age limit- and use something like IQ scores to determine voting eligibility.
I propose IQ because a number of the qualities we look for in a voter requires a certain level of intellectual ability to acquire and critically assess local socio-political issues. For starters, we can just set an IQ limit that covers 80% of our populace. This means that of all eligible voters, only the top 80% (in terms of IQ) will be allowed to vote. With such a system, we can further relax the age criterion to something as low as 16? (I have seen really brilliant teenagers who are very well read. -Usually the school debaters ect.) Such an IQ test can be easily carried out by Established organizations such as MENSA
Benefits of IQ system
The main and biggest benefit of this system is that it will circumvent a long-standing shortfall of democracy. ‘Voter- buying’. In all democracies, we see the incumbent targeting the simple minded/ country folk by giving them small amounts of $$ in ‘exchange’ for their support in upcoming elections. In every society (due to natural distribution), there will always be people not intelligent enough to see through such ploys, and indeed go ahead and vote for the party that ‘gives them more money’. However, with an IQ threshold, such cases will be less likely (or non existent).
Such a system also prevents the government from ‘gaining votes’ by converting uneducated FTs to citizens in exchange for ‘loyalty’.
Conclusion
While using IQ is not the ‘ideal’ way of determining voter eligibility, it is far better than using something as irrelevant as raw age. There are benefits to using an IQ based system such as preventing the intellectually ‘vulnerable’ from being manipulated into voting for a particular party.
In the mean time, we should really research into developing an optimized way to assess for voter eligibility. One that does not discriminate by illogical metrics such as age.
SG Bangla
TRS Contributor
*The author blogs at www.SGBangla.wordpress.com