Give Parents the Vote

Joshua Kleinfeld* & Stephen E. Sachs**

Many of America’s most significant policy problems, from failing schools to the aftershocks of COVID shutdowns to national debt to climate change, share a common factor: the weak political power of children. Children are twenty-three percent of all citizens; they have distinct interests; and they already count for electoral districting. But because they lack the maturity to vote for themselves, their interests don’t count proportionally at the polls. The result is policy that observably disserves children’s interests and violates a deep principle of democratic fairness: that citizens, through voting, can make political power respond to their interests.

Yet there’s a fix. We should entrust children’s interests in the voting booth to the same people we entrust with those interests everywhere else: their parents. Voting parents should be able to cast proxy ballots on behalf of their minor children. So should the court-appointed guardians of those who can’t vote due to mental incapacity. This proposal would be pragmatically feasible, constitutionally permissible, and breathtakingly significant: perhaps no single intervention would, at a stroke, more profoundly alter the incentives of American parties and politicians. And, crucially, it would be entirely a matter of state law. Giving parents the vote is a reform that any state can adopt, both for its own elections and for its representation in Congress and the Electoral College.

Continue reading in the print edition . . .

© 2025 Joshua Kleinfeld & Stephen E. Sachs. Individuals and nonprofit institutions may reproduce and distribute copies of this Article in any format at or below cost, for educational purposes, so long as each copy identifies the author, provides a citation to the Notre Dame Law Review, and includes this provision in the copyright notice.

*Allison and Dorothy Rouse Chair in Law and Faculty Director of the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State, George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School (on leave); Deputy General Counsel, U.S. Department of Education. Upon commencing his government service, Professor Kleinfeld took no further part in the writing or editing of this Article (already scheduled for publication), which does not reflect the views of the Department.

**Antonin Scalia Professor of Law, Harvard Law School. For advice and comments, the authors are grateful to Nate Bartholomew, William Baude, Josh Blackman, Gabriella Blum, Samuel Bray, Guy-Uriel Charles, Robin Chen, Glenn Cohen, Anthony Cosentino, Bianca Corgan, Andrew Crespo, Sam Delmer, Colin Dunkley, Benjamin Eidelson, Yuval Erez, Martha Field, Joseph Fishkin, Jesse Fried, Thomas Gallanis, Howell Jackson, Vicki Jackson, Trevor Jones, Michael Kang, Tarun Khaitan, Andrew Koppelman, Julia Kothmann, Jill Lepore, John Manning, Benjamin Pontz, Richard Re, Daphna Renan, William Rubenstein, Alan Sachs, David Sachs, Tim Schnabel, Amanda Schwoerke, Bradley Smith, Kathryn Spier, Nicholas Stephanopoulos, Roberto Tallarita, and Jonathan Zittrain, and to workshop participants in the Harvard Law School Faculty Workshop, the Harvard Federalist Society, the Harvard Public Law Workshop, the NYU School of Law Colloquium on Constitutional Theory, and the Yale Public Law Workshop. We are also grateful to Kennedy Green for excellent research assistance.