You’re Only as Old as You Vote

Marketers use age to organize and understand people – and it works. So why doesn’t our electoral system?

I've figured out how to make young people vote:

Change the voting system from geographically determined ridings to demographically determined ridings.

We live in communities of our age-peers, do we not?

Take me for example. I'm 31, a graduate from Queen's University in 2001, graduated high school in 1997, etc. These are groups and reference points that set the context of my development – a child of the Snorks and Transformers and fructose-based box drinks. Unfortunately people in my age group (those under 35) don't often vote. So our political views aren't represented, politicians ignore us, and we become even more disillusioned with voting.

Me, I vote, but the electable pool of political talent for whom I vote often has little in common with me, because they are pandering across all age groups in my geographically determined riding, usually pandering to older votes who often have nothing better to do with their afternoons than go out and vote.

I argue that political views are more age-based than community-based. Look at marketing surveys – do advertisers care only what “people in Toronto” watch on television, or do they care what males, aged 25 to 29, watch? And see how efficient marketers are at meeting the needs of these “consumer voters.” Politics could be just as efficient. Under the age-based voting scheme, People aged 25 to 29 would have a certain number of representatives, based on total population.

Let's take Canada (OK, I admit, Canada is a country, a geographical entity, so I'm compromising, but we have to start somewhere and Canada is enlightened enough to listen), which has about 30 million people. Let's divide that into 1000 seats, or 30,000 per "riding."

If ages 25 to 29 make up, say, 5 per cent of the population, then that demographic gets 50 seats, guaranteed. The only people who can elect those 50 seats will be people in my age group. Same goes for any other age group. You could then split it into male and female votes, too. That is, 25 of the seats are determined by women voters, 25 by men.

Now, you could still have political parties, and any politician could still run for any seat. Pasty white 60-year-old lawyers could run to represent 25-to-29 voters if they wanted, but they'd probably lose to people who are more in tune with what 25-to-29-year-olds want. It would take demographic monitoring, but eventually all issues would be redefined based on age.

People would think more about the future because the youngest demographic would be the most cherished for having the most future votes. The 1960s all over again, yes. Climate change solved just like that. It would get results, I promise you. Baby boomers might still throw their (more precisely allocated) weight around, but this more democratic citizenry would be politically engaged, that is, they would give a damn and be happier. Accidents of geography are now being overcome by the internet. By the time everyone has a Wi-Fi signal piped into their cranium, geographic boundaries will finally have melted away.

That's when I'm running for the age-based Omni-Parliament in Web 3.0.