society
April 24, 2024

Family Suffrage: Babies to the Ballot Boxes !?

Sounds good first: parents should get more votes

Sounds tempting: parents should get one more voice per child. They get more political influence because their voice has more weight. The family association has just launched a nationwide campaign. Schirrmherrin is ex-family minister Renate Schmid (SPD). Also the acting family minister Manuela Schwesig (SPD) would like to breed parents an additional vote per child. A family suffrage would be good, said the Social Democrat for the 25th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 2014. The world was thrilled: "A pair of seniors that has no grandchildren and no children has two votes in elections - just as many as one classic family with three underage children, and the senior couple is even twice as likely to vote as a family whose leader is a single mother, which is in itself an injustice. "

The supporters of family suffrage sit in almost all parties. It is not the first attempt to enforce a family suffrage. The proposal has twice been made in the Bundestag. At the end of September 2003, MEPs put their vote in favor of family suffrage in the Bundestag with their motion "Carrying More Democracy through Electoral Law at Birth". Of course, it was time for paying new citizens for the social system, even if that was only between the lines. "The demographic development in Germany endangers the future of our society," reads the Bundestag printed matter number 15/1544. "The problems of the German society of the future can only be overcome if the generation contract also takes into account the younger generation and gives children and their parents the right of importance for the future of our society." Society as a whole must become more child-friendly, readiness Young adults needing to become parents need to be empowered and the many problems and disadvantages for families with children need to be addressed. "

In truth, it is about offspring for the social funds

The application was signed by prominent politicians: Wolfgang Thierse (SPD), then Vice-President of the Bundestag and longtime member of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), the Protestant pastor Rainer Eppelmann (CDU), Dirk Niebel (FDP), who later became Development Minister, the well-known FDP politician Hermann Otto Solms and the green pastor Antje Vollmer. Thierse has two children. Eppelmann five, Niebel and Solms three each.

The Bundestag rejected the application. In June 2008, there was a second attempt, again had prominent supporters, including the former Family Minister Renate Schmidt (SPD), Jens Spahn (CDU), now State Secretary to the Federal Minister of Finance, Cornelia Pieper, then Deputy Federal Chairman of the FDP. Thierse and Solms were also part of the party again. Again, there was no direct talk that the social systems in Germany are dependent on new citizens: "Democracy in Germany is facing an unusual challenge, but at the same time facing a challenge ... Because the proportion of older people is increasing more and more, the political ratio is getting out the balance, the concerns of younger generations are almost inevitably repressed from the political field of action. "

In June 2009, the Bundestag discussed the Bundestag printed paper 16/9868. "We want to promote the cohesion of the generations.We do not want a mutual conflict of generations, but a togetherness," said Renate Schmidt (SPD). "Fundamental rights for children and the principle of intergenerational justice" were "included in the constitution and, as one of the logical conclusions, a right to vote from birth to finally give a voice to the future of our country". Solms said: "A right to vote does not confer any privileges on families - on the contrary, it ends up disadvantaging families, which is constitutionally required." Steffen Reiche (SPD) from Cottbus revealed what it really was: "We need a new balance in times of rapid demographic changes, which is why we fight for the right to vote from birth."

The left Petra Pau unfortunately did not speak, but gave her speech to protocol. She summed up the hypocrisy of this proposal: "All citizens are still denied by referendums or referendums at the federal level to actually exercise a recognized fundamental right, denied incidentally by a number of deputies who now call babies to the urn or want to privilege their parents. "

The request for a right to vote went to the committees and was wiped off the table a few months later with the general election. Until next time. Because the advocates know high-profile lawyers at their side: The now defunct Federal President and ex-constitutional judge Roman Herzog (CDU), his colleague, Paul Kirchhof, also Federal Constitutional Court Judge, are for a family suffrage. "It would make democracy fairer and, I believe, stabilize it," says Kirchhof, who was once considered Merkel's finance minister. »Democracy follows the principle: one person, one voice. A child is a human. A child is even the person who is affected by the political decisions of today for another 80 years, while the other may be affected for 60, 40 or 10 years, "he told the Deutschlandfunk. The lawyer Dr.Lore Maria Pschel-Gutzeit, ex-justice senator from Hamburg and Berlin, does not believe that all state power should come "only from the adult population".

Childless people should be made second-class voters

It is astounding that MPs and constitutional lawyers, who should actually know the paragraphs of the Basic Law while asleep, argue that they have never looked into the constitution. "Everyone has the right to the free development of his personality, as far as he does not violate the rights of others and does not violate the constitutional order or moral law," says Article 2, right up front. This article falls under the eternity clause, which means that it can not be changed, carved in stone. And the free development probably includes the decision not to have children.

Article 20 states that "all state power comes from the people." The people also include the children, argue the proponents of family suffrage, and suppress what is still in the Basic Law: elections are free, general, secret, equal and immediate , General means that all citizens have the same right to vote. No matter what job they do, whether they are poor or rich, how much tax they pay. Regardless of gender and education. So also regardless of the number of their children. Elections are the same. Means: Every voter has the same number of votes. In a democracy, all state power emanates from the people, yes. But these are all citizens and not just the families. Family suffrage would mean that the violence would come from families. Among other things, free elections mean that nobody is sanctioned or discriminated against. So not childless. The Basic Law states who may be drawn up and may attend the ballot box, viz. "Who has reached the age of eighteen; It is possible to choose who has reached the age of majority. «

How free and secret is a choice when parents vote for their children? And what if parents argue with their children about which parties they want to vote for? My conservative parents would never, never, never chose the Greens for me. Anyone who calls for a family suffrage, including the current Federal Minister of the Family and its predecessor Schmidt, want to make childless to second-class voters. "We do not want a mutual conflict of generations, but a togetherness," salivated Renate Schmidt in the Bundestag.

But with the family suffrage it creates the togetherness. Play parents and childless against each other. Splits the society. Cored the Basic Law. Maybe the advocates of a family voting right should rummage through the shop of the Federal Agency for Civic Education. There you will find a very worth reading book entitled "Demography and Democracy". On the "right to vote" it reads: "This constitutional determination of citizens to one? literally ? ? Biopolitical? Position is incompatible with the principles of human dignity, on which the freedom and equality of all citizens in the democratic constitutional state is based. "

Yes, that too: The advocates of a family suffrage do not care about the human dignity of childless. What they also skilfully swept under the table: It is not a hundred years ago that women were allowed to vote in Germany for the first time. In the Empire, only men over 25 were eligible to vote. For women, the passage to the ballot box was taboo. It was not until 19 January 1919 that women in Germany were allowed to vote for the National Assembly for the first time. They had ? after a long, long fight? finally the active and passive right to vote. The Social Democrats Schwesig and Schmidt should know that. After all, her party was the first to call for women's suffrage in 1891. The achievement lasted only 14 years. In 1933, when the Nazis came to power, women's political offices were taboo. Although women were allowed to vote, they were not candidates. But there were ideas to allow women to vote according to their "benefits in maternity."

And now, not a hundred years after women were allowed to vote in Germany for the first time, a Social Democratic family minister and other high-ranking politicians are thinking aloud about a family suffrage that would curtail the voting rights of childless women and men. They only want to make women full-fledged voters when they have children. And the more children a woman has, the more her voice weighs. Of course, that also applies to men. There are even more childless men than women in Germany. But women have a higher existential risk when they have children. Yes, dear parents, for you it may seem tempting at first sight to have more voices and power. But maybe you have sons and daughters who one day take the right not to have children. Do you want them to have less say in this country and to dispute elementary rights? In fact, the proponents of this idea only want to make good weather with the parents. And to advertise their voices.Is yes election campaign.