People with a legal guardian are usually people who are not deemed fit to act. They need to be guarded from their own actions. Most of the time it is about the ability to purchase, but it also affects the right to vote.
In 1983 a similar amendment was proposed but parliament was almost unanimously opposed. 20 years later parliament is almost unanimously in favor of this ‘correction’. We now think that everyone in Holland who is over 18 and has the Dutch citizenship has the constitutional right to vote.
This means that older people with Alzheimer can vote, or can delegate this right to someone they trust. It means people who are not fit to return in society after they finished their sentence (TBS) and stay in a guarded mental hospital. It also means people with a mental handicap like down syndrome.
What happened over the last 20 years we let these people determine the future of our country? Why do we allow them to vote?
I think a modern democracy should grant the right to determine your own future. One way of determining your future is to influence the way your country is run. If you are not able to have an opinion is of no consequence. You can’t be denied this right. In the difficult cases almost everyone (in Holland) has a legal representative that will act in your best interest.
(Disclaimer: my brother has a mental handicap. He lives in a house with 24 hours care and works in a bakery. My sister in law has a mental handicap (sown syndrome.) She lives at home, with her mother and father.)
Is there a barrier for people with a low IQ? is there a barrier for people with no education? Is there a barrier for people without any civil engagement? Is there a barrier for people who don’t read newspapers? is there a barrier for people who vote on the wrong party??
In short… what are we afraid of? That they don’t understand politics, or not take it seriously, or have no opinion, or didin’t discuss their opinion? I know plenty of ‘healthy’ people who don’t =)
I think, democracy is not only about rights, but also about obligations. An obligation to cast a ‘well’ founded vote for example. Like Arjan more or less says with discussing your opinion, taking politics seriously and civil engagement. But what and when is enough?
(Although, a friend of mine once didn’t vote because he thought he didn’t have the ‘right to’ because he wasn’t interested enough at that time (according to his own standards because he was discussing society all the time) and others who were not interested still did vote.)
Exactly, where to draw the line if you want to?
i do believe in responsibility, but not in obligation. that we have a non-compulsory voting right is by no means normal. there are other countries where you are obliged to vote. that would make it even more difficult. we are not obliged to vote, so we have no obligation to cast any sort of vote. but our vote is entirely our responsibility. and our abstinence of voting is also our responsibility. how, for example, do we handle blank votes?
i think we can’t judge with discriminate. we just can’t exclude anyone from being represented and the only way to become represented is to vote.
so i don’t know exactly where you are going?! do you really think we can ever find a way to formulate what exactly that ‘well founded vote’ is?
I think the discussion on democracy is a very hard one, because of its ambiguous character. There are just a lot of pro’s and contras that, because of their nature, are hard to compare.
I think it is quite strange though that my vote equally weights as the vote of my sister, strange simply because of the reason that I’m more intelligent and more informed on political matters.
I don’t mean obligation to vote, I mean if you vote, vote responsible whatever that means… Yes, it takes responsibility so it takes effort and in my opinion more than one people vote without much effort… A discussion like this is not possible without being normative only, who sets the norm? ;) It reminds me of Peter Sloterdijk, that we should select the right genes so that we get the right society
I think it is a nice thought-experiment… Just imagine ;)
First off all…the brother of my best friend, Ramon, has down syndrome and I consider him to be a close friend, I’m sort of part of the family.
Now, he is not able to vote for himself, not even to talk about politics. He doesn’t even have an opinion about it, he’s not even capable of doing this as he doesn’t understand it, his world is totally disconnected for the world of politics and social regulation. The only thing he does with politics is cheer whenever he sees Wim Kok (a pitty for him Wim is not active any more…), because he likes his appearence.
He has the right to vote and his mother is representing that act for him. I think this is absolutely ridiculous. Why? His mother votes in a way that is in the interest of him, or at least as what she interprets as to be in his interest. We have two problems her. First of all it is her opinion about what he would think is best for him. I don’t doubt her integrity, but just think this is quite problematic, since it is questioning his subjective position, which is maybe a right thing to do, but then raises the question on his right to vote in general.
Secondly, it is impossible to know if he would vote in his own interest. I know that when I vote I don’t look at what is best for me, but what I consider to be the best for the whole society. It is impossible for us to know on what arguments Ramon would want to make his vote.
Do you really think Ramon should be allowed to decide what the future of our society should be, even if he doesn’t understand what a society is? Or do you really think that his mother should be allowed to represent him, to my opinion impossible to do, since their is nothing to represent because he doesn’t have a clue what it is about, let alone an opinion?
do you understand what a society is? are you fit to vote on the future of our society? do you have the right to be represented by anyone of your choice? do you have a clue? (i know you have an opinion…)
should you be allowed to vote?
Yes, yes, no, yes
yes
Democracy is about opinions and not about knowledge, but you need to have knowledge to form an opinion, so firstly you need to be able to have knowledge. There is an absolute difference between someone who has a peculiar or out of the ordinary opinion, someone who has a bad informed opinion and someone who is not able to have an opinion because he is not able to have knowledge. Ramon belongs to the latter group. He is, because of his mental handicap not capable to have knowledge about this subject. His mind is simply not capable of processing these concepts. If he was to vote himself it is the same as giving him a pencil an ask him to randomly put a dot on a piece of paper. There is just no ground or whatsoever that makes him decide where to put the pencil down besides coincidence.
The first two cases, the peculiar and bad informed opinion are of a different category. I don’t know about them…
ok, so ramon is not part of society. what about a prisoner?
Difficult one! First of all I think prisoner doesn’t really do as a category, because it is to general for a to heterogeneous group. But allow me to give it a go, and this would probably be more connected to serious crimes then minor offences.
A convicted criminal has put his self outside of society by the act of his crime. With his act of crime he neglected the value of society through violating its moral values and normative laws, thus breaking with the ’silent’ agreement we have made and that socially binds us, the agreement to accept moral values formulated in normative laws in order to coordinate between a group of people that desires to live together as a community.
To my opinion such a person should not be considered as capable of participating in the democratic process, since he neglected this democratic process himself to start with. Apparently he either does not value or does not understand democratic processes, otherwise he would have started a political campaign to in advance of his actions legalize them. I wonder though if we would find it legitimate in our society if people would start a party for criminals having an agenda to make criminal activities legal?
So to me it would be legitimate to disallow this person to vote. A more democratic and just way to settle this, in line I think with our standards of dealing with criminals, is to disallow this person to vote for the during of his imprisonment and an additional probational period after his release.
so ramon and prisoners are excluded. what about people who think man are superior to women? (in holland we have a political party called SGP where women are only recently allowed to participate in this party.)
For me there is no reasonable distinction between men and women.
ok. but how do you judge someone who does think there is a distinction? can someone who regards women as less than men determine the future of your society?
No! Absolutely not! But….the fact that this sort of opinions have a position in our political spectrum is because of the nature of our democratic system. I think that allowing people that are badly informed and lacking intelligence to vote is or can be indirectly a support for demagogues and extremists.
In the case of the SGP, who were forced to allow women in their party, people are having political opinions based on a dogmatic believe, which I find condemnable because it merely appeals to people through sentiment and tradition.
An other case of these extreme positions is Wilders. He too appeals to people through sentiment and not by the intellectual power of his arguments. He never gives a well balanced and thought through argument, but rather follows the strategy of shock and provocation. He knows that this strategy is winning him electorate and that’s why he does it!
Would you find misleading the crowd either through a dogmatic claim or a shock strategy worthy to our society?
are you saying that someone with a radical view should be excluded from voting?
No, I’m saying that people that make a bad informed vote are very often contributing to the electorate of demagogues and extremist and I’m asking the question if you find it just that through this dynamic demagogues and extremist gain influence in our political spectrum.
Seriously Joachim, how badly informed are you?
Don’t tell me you are not as even you are bounded rationally ;-) Can you give me examples of WIlders’ strategy of shock and provocation or his arguments lacking intellectual power? Or do you have examples of persons who are totally the opposite of people like WIlders?
I don’t really get your first point, but about Wilders’ strategy. I just saw another example where he was in debate about problem areas in big cities or something, just saw a short fragment I have to confess.
He was referring to the incidents in Gouda with bus drivers being threatened by youngsters. What he does is presenting this example in a way that is appealing to sentiments, talking about knives on throats etc.. Then he makes a statement about the ‘generaal pardon’ and issues about people not being able to get a house. Just as I’m writing it down here, again I don’t understand the connections he makes different then using the tool of one liners and sentiment to appeal to people who feel discomforted in their environment at the moment (not even mentioning that he might even feed this sentiment of discomfort, cause be honest, how many people express these sort of statements and how many of them have actually experienced threatening with a knife?)
My first point was to remind us all that in some way we are always badly informed, that’s all… You, me and the rest of the world included…
As for the rest I do understand what you mean, but what’s wrong with sentiment? He just hates even one knife threatening incident in our society, what’s wrong with that? He strongly opposes violence against anybody and to convince people of his point of view he uses emotion or feeling or as you call it sentiment and yeah because it works.
For me a nice example is Fitna his documentary which was in no real way discriminating or even oversentimental. Almost everybody was relieved after the release… BUT, before the release all hell broke loose almost all over the world. Why was that and based on what information? On NO information, nobody knew the content at that time but already responded (also with sentiment). That’s what I call badly informed!
There is absolutely nothing wrong with disapproving violence, on the contrary! But…there is something wrong with abusing an incident of violence in a discussion about housing problems, actually wanting to gain support for your objection against the ‘generaal pardon’.
Sentiments in politics are very important in my opinion, but they should function as a source and not as the argument. I would say we cannot govern a society on the principle of emotion, but instead on reason. So a politician should investigate his own emotions and the emotions of his electorate in search of the argument of reason behind it. During this search, which I think is one of the key responsibilities of politics, it becomes clear if emotions have a fundamental base which we should act upon, or if they are the result of incoherent and irrational ‘thinking’.
I agree on the Fitna example, unfortunately more and more our politic and social debate is dominated by populism! I do think though that Wilders had quite a share in the hype that was created around it as well. And fair enough…the statement that it was not up to him to tear the Koran to pieces I thought was a good statement quite rarely to discover in his words.
Ok, that’s very clear. I am in favor of reason and rationality as well. But what does it mean? Something is rational if it reaches a ‘goal’ and if you reach the same goals with emotion you could say that the emotion is rational. So, for me emotion can be rational. And that’s what you say with “it becomes clear if emotions have a fundamental base which we should act upon, or if they are the result of incoherent and irrational ‘thinking’.”
Wilders and a lot of others through time believe that people from low social-economic backgrounds tend to become criminals. That is nothing new and only one way to look at socio-cultural ‘problems’. And to get back at what this post is about, no one is totally informed and that’s why people choose form what they do know and people they trust. You can look at it differently depending on the information you use. Reasoning about ’social life’ is not possible without emotion or a believe in ’something’, I think. For me feeling ‘happy’ is the most important thing in life and I think for many more it is the reason to live, an übersentiment.
In that way nobody is (in)capable to vote…..