Tuesday 7 July 2009

Let's start with voting

There's been a lot of debate in the UK recently about the process of voting. Low voter turnout and a general sense of disenfranchisement and unfairness have led all sorts of proposals to be made, including:
  • Lowering the voting age to 16 (Labour).
  • Adopting 'Alternative Vote Plus' (AV+) in general elections (Labour).
  • Adopting party-list proportional representation in general elections (LibDems).
  • Referendums on demand (Tories).
  • Allowing individual MPs to be recalled from office (Tories).
  • An elected or partially-elected upper chamber (various).
Not all of these are official party policy, of course. The policies labeled 'Tory', for example, come from Hannan and Carswell's book 'The Plan' (although Cameron seems to be adopting 'The Plan' bit by bit).

While there is nothing inherently wrong with any of these proposals (except perhaps lowering the voting age to 16, although I'm willing to be convinced if someone wants to try), they all suffer somewhat from being patches on the existing system rather than coherently designed wholes.

And that's what I'll be writing about, in general: applying system design to politics and policy. The idea is to determine requirements first, then design a system that meets those requirements while avoiding unintended consequences. Quite often, politics and policy work in the other direction: ideology dictates a system, which is then applied without reference to requirements, with the result being a lot of unintended consequences.
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  1. Neil Harding14 July 2009 at 13:18

    The reason I support votes at 16 has little to do with giving votes to 16 year olds and the arguments about legally having sex, legally smoking cigarettes, working, paying income taxes, etc, but because it allows people aged 18-23 an earlier vote in a general election. I'll explain.

    Currently between a quarter and a fifth (depending on gap between elections) of the electorate got to vote at 18 in a general election.

    A fifth had to wait until they were 23. I was one of these voters. People my age were victims of the five year gap between general elections between 1987 and 1992. Amongst this group turnout dropped 15% compared to voters who got to vote at 18. This is very significant and discriminatory.

    By reducing the lower age to 16, no-one would have to wait past 21 to be able to vote.

    Remember also, that only a quarter or fifth of new voters will get to vote at 16. Most will still be over 18 by the time they get to vote in a general election.

    It is unlikely that the small number of extra 16-17 year olds who vote will make any difference to any of the results in the election. It will however, significantly improve turnout amongst the 18-23 age group.

    Personally, I would also reduce the gap between elections to 3 years, as well as, reducing the voting age to 16 - this way everyone would get a vote by 19 at the latest.

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