I do not support this so much as I admit that I would very much enjoy watching the frothing that would result if it were implemented:
This week, Chrystia Freeland praised the left-of-center Canadian economist Miles Corak’s recent call for “Demeny voting,” i.e., allowing mothers or custodial fathers to vote on behalf of their under-18 children. Corak details the idea in a recent report for Canada 2020:
Under such a voting system, just as society transfers economic resources to parents for the benefit of children, so it also transfers political resources. The actual design of a Demeny voting scheme requires discussion. Demeny suggested that each parent should be given the right to exercise an extra half vote for each child under their guardianship.
Admittedly, the idea itself of parents having extra votes appeals to me. Not least because I’m familiar with the elements of the American Left who actually do have kids; their sudden importance in the electoral calculus will have a profound, and almost certainly beneficial, effect on the Democratic party’s policy positions. Which is why, of course, the Democratic party leadership will never, ever support such a thing.