“… you could multiply the vote of under-30s by 1.3 … [because] younger voters will disproportionately bear the costs of climate change …”
The case for a blatantly discriminatory Australian voting system
Bernard Keane
Sun 2 Aug 2026 06.00 AEST…
As someone nearing 60, I can confidently say my generation, and older generations, have been very good at tilting the policy playing field in our favour. Our political and economic system is very good at prioritising the views of older people. So maybe it’s time to tilt the electoral system back in the other direction, in favour of younger voters.
This could be accomplished in several ways. The one most often discussed is lowering the voting age to 16. Another is something called Demeny voting, in which parents or guardians could cast votes on behalf of their children. While this would seem to favour parents rather than young people per se, it should not be forgotten that many parents of under-18s are younger people themselves, despite the rising age of motherhood in Australia.
My preferred method is to weight votes according to age: voters below, say, 30 would receive a more heavily weighted vote, voters 30 to 60 would get a less weighted vote, and those over 60 would retain their current single vote. For argument’s sake, you could multiply the vote of under-30s by 1.3 and that of 30- to 60-year-olds by 1.1. People’s ballot papers could be distinguished by colour – under-30s get blue, 30s to 60s green and oldies red – to make counting easier on election night.
How could such a blatantly discriminatory democratic system be justified? On the grounds of simple justice: policy decisions will affect younger voters for far longer than older voters, who will be alive for a much shorter period. The classic example is the climate crisis: younger voters will disproportionately bear the costs of climate change compared with older voters, who will die in the next 20 years and who are far less likely, seemingly, to care about it.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/aug/02/the-case-for-a-blatantly-discriminatory-australian-voting-system
If you can’t win by fair means, win by foul?
How many of you still believe what you believed when you were 16? How long did it take to see through some of your childhood delusions?
The reason climate messaging is failing with older people, despite over 30 years of relentless climate propaganda, is most people grow up. After you’ve seen climate warning after climate warning come to nothing, even stupid people start realising on some level that there is no climate crisis, along with a bunch of other awakenings from childhood delusions.
From 2019;
The author goes on to point out anomalies in the voting system which already exist, but why make them worse?
If the climate crisis is so nebulous that large numbers of people who have allegedly lived through decades of crisis can’t see the problem, maybe it’s time to admit there is no climate crisis.
Using their logic on other issues that matter to voters would result in changes I’m sure they would not endorse. If in the US, we could make your vote worth the proportion of taxes you pay. About half of the current electorate would have 0.000001 votes each, and people most affected by tax policy would get more (Elon Musk paid $11 billion in 2025, so he gets 50 votes). Clearly as stupid as the Climate based vote.
The US apparently raises around $2T in taxes, (payroll side of taxation), so if 150M are registered to vote, then one vote would be worth $13,333. Musk is going to get over 800,000 votes.
Assuming that I can work a calculator correctly.
He’s a walking and talking state all on his own, he should get a couple of senators too.
younger peoples vote should count less because they are less educated by the current education system, more susceptible to believe internet myths, influenced greater by Anti-Social Websites and, as such, are more “Low.Information” voters. They have yet to learn when they’re being hoodwinked by slick politicians.
One person, one vote; no ifs, no buts.
While it is not optimum, that is the only system that cannot be manipulated.
Until they find an excuse for “mail in” ballots.
Oh wait!
Except the Illegals voters and those stuffing ballot boxes… and of course the mail-in ballots that are in waiting to be dumped at midnight. Then there’s the “tabulators being hacked. Ask Joe Biden, it worked for him! And it just happened in WI. with 5 USB drives being blank!
A clarification on cannot be manipulated.
The responders are correct.
My comment was not intended to address those.
The suggestion was 1.3 vote weighting for up to 30 yo, 1.1 weighting 30 to 60, 1.0 weighting for 60+.
Those weightings are what can easily be manipulated.
Political manipulation: 1.3 is not working, change it to 1.4.
Proof of age can be manipulated.
I am sure there are other means to manipulate such a scheme.
Let us also not forget the 45 year old woman who declared she was 25 years old trans-woman and could compete in that age class.
Mail-in ballots violate chain of custody election laws.
Illegal voters are real.
Manipulation of election computers and scanners is real.
Fake ballots is real.
Those may or may not tally to fraud sufficient to alter the outcome of an election.
Blank USB drives is a new one I had not read about before.
No representation without taxation.
Only net tax payers get to vote.
Actually not a bad idea. Welfare would be work not a lifetime payment. Health care would not be a ticket of richness by the medical industry. Wars would be harder to start and would be fought to win so the world would be safer and less dangerous. SS would be solvent and no $39 trillion and growing debt.
Citizen net tax payers. A minor nit.
Sales taxes/VAT taxes, gas taxes, property taxes, fees, licenses, Social Security taxes, etc. There are myriads of taxes beyond income tax.
It used to be landowners were the only voters.
Wouldn’t that make heads explode now.
Used to be only adult males could vote. That got fixed a bit over 100 years ago.
Was that a fix?
But Musk is rich and the rich never pay their fair share. /s
unsarc/
Actually, the top 10% of incomes pay 72% of income taxes,
the bottom 50% pay 3%
> Using their logic
You mean the Murican logic before the 24th Amendment:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poll_taxes_in_the_United_States
How about the votes being weighted in proportion to how much tax you’ve paid over your lifetime?
If you haven’t paid tax…. your vote is worth nothing.
It might just stop the governments bribing the electorate with welfare ‘gifts’, in the hope of winning over the 30% who will never contribute, funded by the remainder who are forced to pay for it.
How about only those who pay taxes can vote for those in the House of Representatives?
I know things have gotten a bit messed up here in the US, but all tax and spend bills are supposed to originate in the House.
Couldn’t agree more.
We should only be entitled to get out in proportion to what we’ve contributed.
(which of course cannot be applied to wounded / disabled military veterans – they’ve already given to society much more than society could ever give back to them)
You are 100% right – and completely miss the point.
This generation of young people is the 1st that has been completely indoctrinated since the cradle.
Be it education, MSM, Social Media, Big Tech, Search Engines,AI,Global Warming, Covid-Fear.
They have been dumbed down and de-skilled to such a degree t and told to vote for a green/left nanny state that protects them from climate,Covid, Nazis etc.
They even got their own Messiah = Obama.
The problem is – the reproduction rate and therefore their numbers are too low and despite a massive success in culling a nice chunk of older people during Covid(a taylor-made virus to get rid of a certain voter demographic)
there are still too many older people voting “wrong”.
On top of that the vast majority of illegals(=future voters) hate the woke with a passion and will only vote for the left as long as free shit flows.
And green energy = desindustrialization = no more free shit = no more votes from them.
To compensate for this and establish the UN one party system the vote of the green Borg should count more.
That’s why your demand is not an option, as the majority of tax payers(outside of bureaucracy – assuming they pay taxes) do not vote left.
Your idea is far more logical, reasonable and just but counterproductive to the left one party state.
You missed the point of my message. I never mentioned the youth, nor the elderly, nor any illegals, nor greens. I didn’t even mention a side of politics. My point was to limit the vote to those who pay tax.
Maybe your post has landed as a response to the wrong comment. or you completely missed the issue that I was raising.
Back to the original Constitution that placed the vote in the hands of stakeholders.
It missed on a couple of details, such as there were women (a few) stakeholders but they were not given a vote.
During this great 250 year experiment, much has been corrected and resolved. Unfortunately a lot of new baggage has been added.
Welfare became “Entitlement” and is now lumped in with “Social Security.”
Contlol the language, control the ideas is at play.
I disbelieve emphatically the notion that Covid was deliberately tailor-made to eliminate the seniors. Seniors are always at the greatest risk for every respiratory disease. It is part of growing old. Now, if one were to dive into the Covid response mandates, a case could be made there.
All indicators are that Covid-19 was developed as a test case for biological warfare.
This proposal may well be the most tragically stupid thing I’ll have read all week.
It’s worth bringing out this quote from old Plato:
“When fathers get used to letting their children have their way, when sons no longer heed their word, when teachers tremble before their pupils and prefer to flatter them, when young people finally despise the laws because they no longer recognize any authority over them, of anything or anyone, then that is, in all its beauty and all its youth, the beginning of tyranny.”
I wonder whether this “enhanced” vote also counts for more when it comes from young right-wing voters? Or does it only work for votes cast for eco-left parties?…
The quote describe the school systems in California and in a lot of places around this country. The part about laws being ignored infects a huge percentage of the population educated in those school systems.
That also applies to France and a large part of Western Europe. As a general rule, the authority of the teacher, the educator, the transmitter of knowledge, has been sacrificed in the name of the student’s well-being, who must (at least in France, since a reform of the national education system) “shape their own knowledge.”
I was never a good student myself (to put it very colloquially, I couldn’t be bothered to do a damn thing), but I was probably the one who, while doing the least, was at the same time the most respectful of my teachers’ authority… I’m glad I left the school system in 2017 (when I obtained my baccalauréat), before wokeness, which was already beginning to emerge, really started wreaking havoc.
The Republic has been glorified by all fascist governments.
What you describe was put in practice during the Chinese ‘Cultural’ Revolution. The death toll was counted in hundreds of millions.
Wow! Where do these people and their insane ideas come from? It seems they are everywhere. I think they are like roaches immune to insecticides like actual rigorous investigatory climate science. When you step on them then lift your foot they manage to scurry away to produce more roaches and more nonsense!
‘Where do these people and their insane ideas come from?’
K-12 education and most universities.
Look to the Teacher’s Unions.
No thanks, I’d rather not look to Randi Weingarten.
Bravo! 🙂
They want young people to have a higher weight to their vote, because they’re the easiest to brainwash. Indeed, many already have been.
Tik Tok and You Tube, most likely.
They’re not very productive job-wise, and so they have the time and energy and the need to be busy with nonsense.
They are just scared by the rise of One Nation , a party with a rational centrist viewpoint, to counter the rabid leftism of the Greens and Labor.. and the limp-wristed leftism of the Liberal party.
And as for the totally ignorant comments about the Senate, it shows he has zero clue what the Senate is for.
The House of Representatives is aimed at one person one vote, and the Electoral Commission does try to keep electorates about the same population, within a reasonable range.
There is a new Census being done at the moment (last night was Census night).. we may see some re-distribution of electoral boundaries happen at some stage to level out some of the inconsistencies.
The Senate is the chamber of review.. to give equal votes to each State so that large states don’t totally dominate the small states.
The left are getting desperate at the rise of One Nation.
Sounds like you’re talking UK parties.
I don’t know much about them.
He’s talking about Australian parties, and Keane, to our shame, is one of ours.
He is also accurately describing the platform of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
Wait. What if the more likely outcome is reversed from the tired narrative of crisis and cost?
“The classic example is the climate crisis: younger voters will disproportionately
bear the costsreap the benefits of climate change compared with older voters…”There. The whole idea is bogus.
The Green Blob has been predicting imminent doom since 1968, when I was 15. I doubt them for a reason I doubt Jehovah’s Witnesses, who predicted Jesus would return in 1975.
This is a bit off-topic. Remember the book “The Late Great Planet Earth” by Hal Lindsey, published in 1970? It was a best seller that went through 26 printings. It was based on supposed Biblical prophecy. Or at least Hal Lindsey’s interpretation of the Bible. Like the global warming prophets, the book made all sorts of grim predictions and even gave a rough time-line for the events of the Apocalypse and the second coming. Gog was the Soviet Union, which doesn’t even exist anymore, the ten-nation confederation was the European Common Market. And here we are 56 years later. And we’re still here. There is an old Yiddish proverb that goes “Man plans and God laughs.”
My girlfriend of long ago had a sister (a hygienist) who worked for Oral Roberts brother who was a dentist (definitely misnamed). She believed in the Rapture and even had a date for the ocurrence. I aske her who was going to heaven.Her answer..only Christians. I asked her if Buddhists and other religions are excluded. Yep! I thought that kind of thinking was Amazingly idiotic.
It’s how you get people to fall into line. It apparently works with muslims.
I watched a TV revival many years ago.
It was a black (hate using the term) preacher to a mostly black (hat using that term) congregation.
He offered a stunning bit of wisdom.
He said there is only one God.
It is the same for Catholics and Protestants and Jews and Muslims and Buddhists and the whole litany of religions that are all around the planet.
He then offered that God provided guidance to various peoples at various times around the planet (Jesus (Yeshua), Moses, Abraham, Muhammed, Buddha, and the others) in manners best suited for those societies.
A shame we have not learned and have not learned how to live in peace and harmony.
A shame how many died in “religious wars.”
I was young and dumb once.
I’m long past “young”. (“Dumb” is still up for debate.)
Why should my vote back then have counted more than the vote of someone who has lived longer?
I’m in the US. The first time I was eligible to vote, I was going to vote for McGovern. I went to the poll to vote. I was denied. Why? Because I was so politically astute that I didn’t know I needed to register to vote first.
I was young and dumb but now thankful I couldn’t vote for him.
(I’ve learned a few things over the years.)
They fixed your problem. Now we have same day vote/registration. Gives them a lot of time (/sarc) to verify you eligibility to vote, eh?
I too think that voting should be by age, but in reverse of the author. Your votes should count times your age, simply because of wisdom accrued. Kids don’t know s***, and their vote should count accordingly.
I used to argue that the minimum voting age should be 21. After all, if you are not mature enough to purchase alcohol, tobacco and guns, you obviously are not mature enough to vote.
But then I changed my view to that the minimum voting age should be 26. This was after Obama argued children should be able to remain on their parent’s insurance plans until 26 because they were otherwise incapable of procuring health insurance on their own. If you’re not mature enough to get your own health insurance, you’re certainly not mature enough to vote on it.
😎
But still I go for 1 citizen of age, 1 vote. Period.
But returning the voting age to 21 has merit. It was lowered during the Viet Nam war with the reasoning if an 18 year old can be drafted to go to war, they should have a vote. That also has a lot of merit.
A few years ago some Dems were promoting lowering the voting age to 16. Those promoting that were insane.
“A few years ago some Dems were promoting lowering the voting age to 16. Those promoting that were insane.”
Some are still pushing that.
25-26 is about the time your pre-frontal cortex finally matures. That’s the part of the brain where rational decision making occurs.
Makes more sense to raise the age to that than to lower it to the age point where rational decision making is at its lowest, which is the 16 the leftards keep trying to push for.
While one’s pre-frontal cortex should mature with age, depriving it of vital nutrients such as high quality fats, proteins and, especially, cholesterol will result in incomplete (or retarded) development. This is becoming increasingly evident in libtard vegans who must rely on their emotions as their brains are too starved for proper energy sources to function properly.
It is all clearly laid out in the book “Why Vegans Have Smaller Brains (And How Cows Reverse Climate Change.)” It’s my go-to entertainment source whenever I fly around the country. Sometimes I even read a little instead of laughing at the reactions!
That’s the age that Marxists have theirs removed.
Young people’s electoral votes should count less because they are still a bit too silly.
One of the financial ‘fixes’ to the current US fiscal situation—that I have favored for years—is that to be eligible to vote in federal elections, you have to have paid federal income taxes the year before. That removes the over 50% freeloaders who didn’t but do—to continue their freeloading. Is philosophically similar to the pre constitutional requirement in most soon to become 13 states that to vote, you had to own real property in the state. Same underlying idea of ‘skin in the game’.
Unfortunately requires a constitutional amendment that the freeloading 50% would never agree to.
I agree. Voters should be productive citizens of the United States.
All those in favor of individual freedom and the right to private property get a vote, all others get a suggestion.
This and many of the socialist needs and desires arise from greed and the yearning for control over others. Period. End of story.
I may be unique but how many kids have wanted, really wanted something like a bike, a car, booze, etc. How many wished they had a way to make their parents give it to them right now? Not tomorrow, not next year, right now?
Young folks are simply looking for any excuse with no logical underpinning to get what they want and get it now! Work and save for what you want? Sorry, no patience for that!
My son was an exception.
He wanted a Nintendo system.
He saved up all of his allowance and chore moneys and when he had enough I took him to buy it.
His sisters wanted free plan. They wasted their money on bouncy balls and other trivia.
He said 25 cents per game. They did not like the concept. I enforced his rule. Pay to play.
When PCs first appeared with some entertaining games, etc., our kids wanted unlimited time. My wife and I said no to that and created and printed computer dollars. Do a chore, get computer bucks. Do your homework. Get computer bucks. Help in the yard work or in the kitchen, get computer bucks. We posted a chart with the rates. To play they paid computer bucks, each dollar worth a number of minutes. They got on, an egg timer was set. The timer went off, they either quit or paid more computer bucks.
All of my kids are financially literate although they align with a lot of the wife’s New England political points of view. Over time, they have evolved to a more balanced outlook.
What is missing from the proposal as with so many “social justice” issues of the day is balance. Balance comes from weighing both sides, not just leaping on and riding the latest horse to come along.
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” – George Orwell, Animal Farm
16 is far too young to vote. I graduated from college when I was 21, and even that was too young to vote. I didn’t know anything about politics until I got my first adult paycheck. Before that I called myself a liberal because that seemed the cool thing to be. Seeing how much the government was taking from me and getting no benefit from it changed my views forever.
No vote if you have ADHD, on the autism spectrum or feel you are in the wrong body.
Young people in English-speaking countries have been exposed to so much propaganda from leftist curriculums and taught by teachers who themselves often know little beyond them that they’re really not in any great position to do any serious voting. Mind you, there is also no shortage of adults who are just as poorly informed themselves, so unless countries can require voters to qualify for voting rights, the current system is going to be locked into position.
Social media is brainwashing millions.
If you’re on the Govt payroll as a public servant you should not be allowed to vote at the Govt level you are employed at.
Thus Federal public servants don’t get to vote at Federal level, State at State level, LG at LG level.
Stops them voting for ever greater pay rises and entitlements for themselves.
Start with Congress.
During the era of the Deficit Reduction debate, Congress gave themselves a massive pay hike (note how the led by example/sarc), a major boost to health care and retirement benefits and grandfathered those benefits to anyone who ever held a seat in Congress.
In short, I agree.
The original Constitution did not envision Congress as employment. If offered compensation for travel, lodging, and food expenses so it did not burden Congressmen financially. Yes, it also authorized Congress to pass laws in that regard.
If one looks at the IQ score, half the population cannot tie their shoes without instructions much less vote using a mind on any issue. The purpose of universal voting is very clear, it attempts to keep the politicians from starting wars against each other using the sheep herd. Our system tries to damp down the mob, french revolution type, with a supreme court, a constitution hard to modify, a senate and congress with different lengths in office and a separate president who cannot make law. That is all to make it harder for some politician to get his sheep to seize power and murder anybody not with the program an occurrence pretty common world wide. The fake climate crisis is an example of politicians trying to seize total and absolute power to save the sheep from a non existent crisis. The sheep believe just like they have in the past for other claims by the would be ruling class or ruling class.
We (USA) have the worst government on earth, except for all the others.
Credit:
“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
— Attributed to Winston Churchill
President T-Swift?
Senator Cardi B?
Of the WAP party.
“As someone nearing 60, I can confidently say my generation, and older generations, have been very good at tilting the policy playing field in our favour. Our political and economic system is very good at prioritising the views of older people”
Is that explained? Or just assumed.
Just when you think the climate nonsense is at rock bottom along comes this dross and the ratchet drops another notch. What’s next, no voting for the over 60’s because they haven’t got much future ahead of them and they would be selfish.
Exhausting.
Maybe only the over-60s should be allowed to vote and sit in parliament. Then, if anyone younger wants something from the government, they’ll have to be nice to older people rather than slag them off all the time.
Well he would say that for his little Gretaheads now wouldn’t he-
A Greenpeace co-founder walked away from the movement… his reason sparked a global debate | Watch
What bilge. Climate Change is real but NOT man made. We adapt to it as we always have
Just imagine an army of Greta Thunberg clones determining your energy and food policies.
Too many nightmares from that concept will spring.
I say let her into Gaza.
…and keep her there!