Czechia proposes letting parents vote on behalf of children

At a family policy forum in mid-September, Czech sociologists and demographers proposed an unusual measure to combat the country's record-low birth rate — giving parents an extra vote in elections for each minor child. The idea was discussed by Prime Minister Andrej Babiš and Labour and Social Affairs Minister Aleš Juchelka, both from the ANO party, along with the country's leading demographers.

Why children have no voice

Czechia's birth rate is now the worst in its modern history, and forecasts suggest it will keep falling. Babiš is also pushing other family-support measures in parallel — including a payment of roughly one million crowns for a second child and a tax break for a third.

The problem, experts say, is that children are part of society but have no right to vote until the age of 18. Politicians readily invoke families in their rhetoric but rarely support them in practice, because children don't vote and young parents are relatively few.

A telling example is the recent dispute over pension increases. The hole in the state budget is already the second-largest in Czech history, yet the government is still considering an additional rise in payments. The law provides for average pensions to rise by 300 crowns — the smallest increase in the past 10 years — which is exactly why the cabinet, which relies on the trust of older voters, is looking for a way to add more. The budget has already earmarked 10 billion crowns for this — money that, according to supporters of the idea, could instead reduce the deficit or go toward underfunded education.

What is “Demeny voting”

The idea of giving children voting rights through their parents is called “Demeny voting”, after Hungarian economist and demographer Paul Demeny, who introduced the concept in a 1986 study. The idea itself is not new — it was discussed as far back as the mid-19th century in France, and later in Germany. One version of the model gives each parent half a vote per child.

“This is the fairest way to balance out an imbalance that is already fuelling a spiral: the number of pensioners is growing while there are fewer and fewer children. Older generations increasingly outweigh children, which is why political decisions are more often made in their favour,” explains sociologist and Liberi trade union chairman Pavel Rusý.

According to him, Czech society currently has nearly 2 million people with no political power at all — exactly as many as there are pensioners.

How realistic is this

Demographer Kryštof Zeman of the Vienna Institute of Demography believes that an ageing society has no choice but to reckon with the fact that pensioners are an increasingly powerful group of voters whom politicians are courting ever more actively. In his view, voting rights for children need to be discussed now, or they will remain a group of little interest to politicians.

Demographer Jiřina Kocourková of the Department of Demography at the Faculty of Science, Charles University, is more cautious: she has no definitive answer, but says the topic certainly deserves discussion — the population is structurally ageing, and as the number of young people shrinks, their problems will increasingly be pushed into the background.

The actual numbers bear this out. People under 34 make up 37% of the Czech population, those aged 35 to 64 make up 42%, and those over 65 make up 21%. But excluding minors, who cannot vote, the picture changes: among voters, the younger group accounts for only 22%, the middle generation for 52%, and the elderly for 26%. At the same time, minors and pensioners currently make up equal shares of society — around 20% each, or just over 2 million people on each side. In the future, this ratio will shift sharply in favour of the elderly.

Demographer Tomáš Sobotka, who was the keynote speaker at a recent government conference on low fertility, acknowledges: “If it were possible to strengthen the voice representing the interests of children and young people, that would benefit society. But in practice this is an extremely difficult step to implement.”

The idea has already been seriously debated twice in the German Bundestag — in 2003 and 2008 — and was backed by the then federal family minister Renate Schmidt, but no law was ever passed. In Hungary, a similar discussion took place while drafting the new constitution under the leadership of the Fidesz party and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — there, only mothers were to receive the extra vote for children, but that plan, too, stayed on paper.

A more realistic option — voting from age 16

In practice, a different idea has better chances — lowering the voting age threshold. A corresponding bill was recently submitted by lawmakers from the TOP09 party, proposing to let citizens vote in municipal elections from the age of 16, but the government rejected it.

Justice Minister Jeroným Tejc (ANO) argues that the threshold of maturity is set at 18 and is widely accepted. At the same time, the same government and the same minister are simultaneously proposing to lower the age of criminal responsibility for minors for the most serious crimes from 15 to 13.

Lowering the voting age has long been championed by the STAN movement — it submitted its first such proposal back in 2019, also starting with municipal elections. The Pirate Party would support the idea too. The Civic Democratic Party and the Christian Democrats are more reserved about the proposal but do not rule it out entirely.

It would hardly be a revolutionary step: in neighbouring Germany, for instance, it is already possible to vote in municipal elections from the age of 16, while in Austria that threshold has long applied to elections at every level. “Voting rights have kept expanding over time. First all men got them, then women, and now the last group without this basic civil right is children,” concludes demographer Zeman.

Around Prague, based on reporting by seznamzpravy.cz