No representation without full responsibility

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In introducing the proposal of the Welsh Government for to allow 16 and 17 years olds to vote in local elections, the minister, Alun Davies, said “I think everybody who pays taxes should be able to vote”.  It’s a nice line, with echoes of the ‘no taxation without representation’ slogan used by American colonists in the 18^th century as part of their demand for independence.  In the context in which the minister used it, however, it’s utter nonsense.  Few, if any, 16 or 17 year olds pay council tax to the only bodies for which he proposes that they will be allowed to vote; it’s not so much abolishing taxation without representation, more a case of introducing representation without taxation.

They are, of course, also ‘consulting’ on a separate proposal to allow the same group to vote in Assembly elections, as part of a wider consultation on changes to the Assembly; but any government which really believed in the principle being propounded by Alun Davies would have taken that element out and included it in the proposal to extend the franchise.

In a move which I thought curious, in its timing at least, the same government subsequently announced that it is to ban intimate piercings for those under 18, thereby declaring them old enough to have a vote on who should represent them, but still requiring protection from themselves on an age-related basis.  It highlights the strange mish-mash of different ages at which people are considered to be ‘adults’; there is surely a case for aligning them all at one age.  Part of the problem is that people mature at different rates; some people are more mature at 15 than others are at 25.  Short of introducing a test of some sort to determine maturity, the legislation can only work by setting an arbitrary age, but that doesn’t really reflect the reality.

How could we determine, or judge, maturity?  I’m pretty certain that, had 16 and 17 year olds been allowed to vote in June 2016, the result of the referendum on EU membership would have been a lot closer.  Whether that demonstrates maturity or immaturity is entirely a matter of perspective.  One UK government minister rejected the idea of votes at 16 on the basis that young people are not sufficiently mature, but what does he mean by that?  There is no maturity test for voters; indeed, it’s hard to see how there could ever be, because such a test would be necessarily highly subjective.  And him telling an opposition spokesperson to “grow up” doesn’t exactly suggest that maturity is either a requirement for, nor a common attribute among, elected politicians, even of quite an advanced age.

At whatever age the right to vote is given to people, it’s hard then to argue that people who can vote for or against proposals, politicians, and the future of the country are not old enough to make all other decisions for themselves. On balance, I still believe that giving people the vote at 16 is the right thing to do, but proposals such as that on piercings make me wonder whether the proponents have really thought through all the logical consequences.

Bribes and transactionalism

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Those clever Tories have noticed that they didn’t do very well at attracting the votes of young people in the election, so they’ve decided to do something about it.  In this case, ‘doing something’ means offering changes on issues such as tuition fees and housing.  And they’re being utterly shameless about it; they’re not even attempting to say that there’s anything wrong with the way things are at present – indeed, they give every indication of believing that current policies are the right ones.  They are making no attempt to explain why the changes they propose will be better for the country as a whole, or how they fit with their other objectives – I suspect that they are not really convinced themselves.

No, this is all about targeting a specific section of the electorate (not even all young people in fact) and offering direct bribes to persuade them to change their voting patterns.  Will it work?  I really don’t know, but I suspect that it’s just too obvious and blatant to have quite the effect that they want.  Confirmation bias is as likely to make people believe that they could have done these things all along if they’d really wanted to, so that all that guff about austerity was the lie that many knew it to be all along.

But I shouldn’t really be that surprised at the nature of the pitch they are making.  It is, after all, axiomatic to them that individuals will always act in their own best financial interests rather than thinking about any wider issues.  From that perspective, all they need to do is to explain to the target audience why voting Tory will make them as individuals better off, and turn it into a simple monetary transaction.  They’ve become so blinded by that belief that they really can’t see anything wrong with that approach.  Perhaps it’s another form of what someone said about the existing order containing the seeds of its own destruction.  Self-destruction certainly seems to be working its way up the Tory agenda these days.

Motivation and cynicism

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A couple of weeks ago, Roger Scully’s Elections in Wales blog carried a guest post by a new colleague of his, Dr Stuart Fox.  It dealt with the subject of young voters and how to appeal to them.  It concluded, in essence, that the difference between younger voters and their older peers isn’t about the issues that concern them so much as about their willingness to vote at all; in broad terms, their concerns largely mirror those of other sections of the electorate.

I thought that it was an interesting conclusion.  By and large, the thrust of what the various parties are doing to attract younger voters assumes almost the direct opposite, and is largely based on the assumption that younger voters do have a different agenda and can be motivated to go out and vote for party X by an electoral offering which targets those policy areas which the parties assume are of direct personal interest to the target group.

In a sense, the parties are behaving in a consistent fashion here in assuming that issues like tuition fees and voting age will motivate younger voters – they also assume that issues such as pensions will motivate older voters, and so on.  It’s possible of course that the parties are right and the pollsters are wrong on this.  By that, I don’t necessarily mean that the pollsters are wrong in the numbers or in their analysis of the numbers – the post shows plenty of evidence to support the conclusions and analysis drawn from them.

But the validity of all that depends on the veracity of the responses given by people when asked the questions, and there are two obvious ways in which the answers might be invalid.  The first is that people might just be lying.  It is at least possible that people might say one thing (because they might not want to appear selfish) but do another; I seem to remember that there was some evidence of that phenomenon a few years ago in relation to the idea of an income tax rise.  The other is that people might be drawing a distinction in their own minds between what they see as being the ‘most important issues’ facing the country and what might actually motivate them to vote as individuals.  If either of those were to be true, than perhaps the parties have got it right after all.

But what if they’re not?  What if the responses given are entirely truthful, so that the analysis and conclusions drawn are entirely valid?  That would suggest (and not just for young people) that the electorate was going to decide much more on the basis of what they feel is right for the country as a whole rather than on a narrowly selfish basis. (And I realise, of course, that ‘group selfishness’ in this context isn’t at all the same thing as altruism).  That would suggest that continued and repeated appeals to the more selfish instincts of particular groups of people might simply add to the cynicism about politicians and parties rather than improve the motivation to participate.   

And I suspect that that cynicism, coupled with a feeling that ‘it doesn’t really make any difference’ (given that the offerings are all so similar) might actually be a more accurate reason for low turnout than any failure to ‘press the right buttons’ for any particular section of the electorate.