A new right-wing government in Hungary is considering an “unprecedented” proposal: give extra votes to mothers with children.

The conservative Fidesz party has made several controversial decisions since coming to power on a populist rightwing agenda, including a crackdown on the media, but the latest proposal could be prove to be its most contentious.

“Some 20% of society are children,” said József Szájer, a senior Fidesz official and MEP. “This is quite a considerable group that is left out of representation. The interests of these future generations are not represented in decision-making.” He added: “We know at first it seems an unusual idea, but in the 50s it was unusual to give votes to black people; 100 years ago, it was unusual to give votes to women.”…

Szájer said he was inspired by the work of the American demographer Paul Demeny, who developed the concept in 1986. Under Demeny Voting, each parent is given half a vote for each child, permitting a split vote in the event that the parents have differing political loyalties.

However, to counter concerns about the Roma winning more votes, Szájer said in the Hungarian case, the move would have “permitted the passage of a law giving mothers the vote on behalf of a maximum of one child”…

The discourse on Demeny Voting first emerged in Germany and Japan in the 2000s as a solution to concerns that policy development is biased in favour of the elderly rather than young families.

Four things seem noteworthy in this story:

1. One of the reasons for giving out these extra votes is to help give more of a voice to younger generations. Considering differences in opinion in some nations between older and younger generations, this may be a problem to address. But would mothers necessarily be looking out for their children as opposed to themselves when voting?

2. This is also an issue of ethnicity: moving this proposal forward has been influenced by feelings regarding the Roma population. Since this proposal might give too much voting power to the Roma (we can assume they have higher birth rates than the rest of Hungary?), it might be limited to one extra vote per family with children.

3. Although the article doesn’t mention this as a reason, I wonder if some of this is driven by demographics, specifically a low birth rate. Like other industrialized nations, whether Japan or other European nations, Hungary has a low birth rate of 9.60 per 1,000 population (according to the CIA Factbook, #200 out of 222 nations). Perhaps this measure is also an incentive for more families to have children?

4. While an idea like this seem to go against typical democratic procedures of one vote per adult, it reminds me of another voting scheme that was set up to deal with an existing social issue. Could more countries and governments seek different voting structures in order to reach certain ends?