There are two different ideas being floated here, and both are bad.
They are not exactly the same.
They are just bad in different ways.
Bad Idea #1: “One Household, One Vote”
This is the idea that a household should vote as one unit.
Sounds cozy, right?
A family meeting. A dinner-table discussion. A little civic togetherness.
Except households are not governments.
Households are made up of individual people with individual rights.
A wife does not lose her political voice because she got married.
An adult child living at home does not become a footnote.
A grandmother in the guest room does not get absorbed into someone else’s ballot.
And let’s not pretend we don’t know how this usually works.
The “household vote” almost always points back to the old “head of household” model — meaning one person gets treated like the decision-maker, and everyone else gets told to be agreeable.
That is not democracy.
That is disenfranchisement with curtains.
Bad Idea #2: The “Family Vote”
This one is different.
The “family vote” says parents should get extra voting power because they have children.
So instead of one adult, one vote, parents would also vote on behalf of their kids.
A couple with four children could potentially have six votes.
A single adult gets one.
A childless couple gets two.
An infertile couple gets two.
A retiree gets one.
A young worker gets one.
A person caring for aging parents gets no extra votes.
See the problem?
This does not give children a voice.
It gives parents more power.
Children are not filling out ballots.
Children are not weighing tax policy, reproductive rights, education funding, foreign policy, healthcare, climate policy, or Supreme Court appointments.
Their parents are.
And parents already vote with their children’s futures in mind if they choose to.
They do not need bonus ballots.
The Real Problem
Both ideas attack the same basic principle:
One person. One vote.
Not one household.
Not one family unit.
Not one adult plus bonus votes for dependents.
Citizenship is not supposed to be weighted by marriage, fertility, household structure, religion, income, or whether someone has reproduced.
Because the second we start saying some citizens deserve more political power than others, we are no longer protecting democracy.
We are redesigning it for the people who already want control.
And somehow, the people pushing these ideas always seem very confident they will be the ones holding the extra votes.
Funny how that works.
Scarlett says no thank you.