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Germany debates babies at ballot box plan
CLARE CHAPMAN
NEW-BORN babies in Germany are to be given the vote if plans disclosed by an influential group of German MPs get the go-ahead.
Parents will be trusted with their children’s votes until they are of "an able age" under the plans, but families with more children will have more votes.
The issue is not new in German politics but never before has a motion been compiled and presented to the Reichstag.
Free Democratic Party (FDP) MP Klaus Haupt said: "If it is written in the constitution that all power goes to the people, then children
must also be given the right to vote." Haupt is among a number of MPs to put forward a cross-party proposal to introduce child voting.
If the proposal is accepted it will immediately increase the number of potential voters by 13.8 million. At the moment, Germans must
wait until their 18th birthday before being able to cast their first vote, but the controversial new proposal would mean even school-aged
children could help to choose the country’s next Chancellor.
However, a change in Article 38 of the constitution is necessary for the voting system to be reformed, which
itself requires a two-thirds majority vote in both the upper and lower houses of parliament.
The proposal has already attracted a number of the parliament’s top politicians, including parliamentary president Wolfgang Thierse
from the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and vice-president Antje Vollmer, of the Greens. Minister for Family Affairs Renate Schmidt
(SPD) has also voiced her support for family voting rights.
Haupt and FDP colleague Hermann Otto Solms, who jointly put forward the bill, said they believed it was "unjust that every fifth
German is excluded from voting in elections".
The proposal directly states: "Those who continue to deprive children and youths of the basic constitutional right to vote are, on the
one hand, bringing the equality of German citizens into question, and on the other hand, abetting political values that tend to displace
burdens on to the next generation."
It adds: "We can only secure the future of our society, when the concept of the family is given the chance to influence politics."
Even constitutional lawyers are not opposed to the introduction of family voting rights. Former German Chancellor and president of
the Federal Constitutional Court, Roman Herzog, said he viewed the proposal favourably.
However, not all politicians are in favour of extending voting rights to the new born.
SPD party leader Franz Muentefering said the voting system should not be changed and Christian Democratic Union general secretary
Laurenz Meyer described the proposal as "unrealistic". |
©-free 2003 Adelaide Institute