“… 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.
…
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.
