The slogan "one person, one vote" is held to be essential to democracy. I argue, against its standard interpretation, that the power of one's vote should decline with age. The idea of relational equality it expresses is ambiguous, in ways currently unappreciated, between synchronic and diachronic conceptions. The standard interpretation is that voters must relate as equals synchronically in each election. I argue that they can do so diachronically, across elections. From the original position, r…
Read moreThe slogan "one person, one vote" is held to be essential to democracy. I argue, against its standard interpretation, that the power of one's vote should decline with age. The idea of relational equality it expresses is ambiguous, in ways currently unappreciated, between synchronic and diachronic conceptions. The standard interpretation is that voters must relate as equals synchronically in each election. I argue that they can do so diachronically, across elections. From the original position, rational people would prefer a voting procedure giving more weight to their younger selves. The argument turns on the asymmetrical structure of political authority between cohorts: older cohorts influence the formative conditions of younger ones in ways the young can never reciprocate. Age-weighted voting addresses this asymmetry, concentrating more of our overall political influence on the parts of our lives that we actually live to experience. The strongest counterargument is committed to a form of epistocracy.
