Keane: weight Australian votes by age, not state
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- Bernard Keane proposes weighting Australian votes by age: voters under 30 would receive 1.3 votes, voters 30 to 60 would receive 1.1 votes, and over-60s would retain one vote, distinguished by colour-coded ballot papers (blue, green, red).
- Keane cites Danish political scientists Andreas Bengtson and Andreas Albertsen, whose 2023 work explored whether weighted voting could be justified on all-affected, all-subjected, and relational egalitarian grounds for democracy.
- Australia's Senate already weights votes by state of residence: one senator per 34,300 Tasmanians compared with one per 381,000 Victorians, making a Tasmanian Senate vote worth more than ten times a Victorian one, Keane writes.
- Lower-house weighting is also entrenched: it takes an average of about 75,000 Tasmanians to elect an MP, versus 110,000 to 120,000 in New South Wales and roughly 100,000 in several Western Australian electorates in 2025.
- Alternative proposals Keane canvasses include lowering the voting age to 16 and Demeny voting, in which parents or guardians cast votes on behalf of children under 18.
- Keane's central justification is that younger voters will live with policy decisions (notably climate) far longer than older voters, who will die within roughly 20 years, outweighing older voters' greater experience or concern for younger people.
Why it matters: If adopted, the proposal would redistribute voting power toward under-30s in a federation where younger Australians are already disproportionately affected by long-horizon policies like climate, while over-60s — a politically powerful cohort — would see their ballots reduced. Keane argues age is a more rational basis for weighting than geography, since states are arbitrary historical creations whereas duration of exposure to a decision is directly relevant.
