Politics

Yale’s Samuel Moyn argues for extra voting weight for younger voters

Name: Yale’s Samuel Moyn argues for extra voting weight for younger voters
Uploaded: 2026-07-23T18:46:00+00:00
Description: Samuel Moyn argues that democratic equality should account for how long people will live under the policies chosen in elections. He says he is not calling for removing older people’s voting rights, but for increasing the weight of younger voters’ ballots because they face longer-term consequences.

Breaking Points · Author Says OLD PEOPLE VOTE Should Be DILUTED · July 23, 2026

Breaking Points

Author Says OLD PEOPLE VOTE Should Be DILUTED

"I never, you know, call for diluting older people's vote, let alone stripping them of vote. What I do, you know, suggest is that we should think of the equality between human beings differently. And the stake that someone who's 20 has in an election is just much greater than the stake someone who's 80 has in an election."

Samuel Moyn argues that democratic equality should account for how long people will live under the policies chosen in elections. He says he is not calling for removing older people’s voting rights, but for increasing the weight of younger voters’ ballots because they face longer-term consequences.

About this episode

Breaking Points interviews Yale Law School professor Samuel Moyn about his book Gerontocracy in America and his argument that US institutions increasingly reflect the interests of older Americans. Moyn distinguishes the age of politicians from what he calls broader “elder control” through voting patterns, campaign finance and wealth. He proposes conventional measures such as age limits for office, but also floats more structural interventions including youth quotas for representation, easier voting access for younger people (holiday voting, looser registration rules), and changes to election frequency.

The most contentious exchange centres on Moyn’s suggestion that younger voters’ ballots should be given extra weight because younger people live longer under the policies chosen; he insists he is not calling to strip older people of voting rights. He cites examples intended to show age skew in participation, including a claim that the median age of New Mexico primary voters in 2024 was 72.

Host counterarguments stress class and campaign finance as the core drivers of political power, warning that age-based analysis can become divisive. Moyn responds that age can be a “modality” through which class is lived, alongside factors such as race and gender. On policy, he argues against cutting Social Security as a route to intergenerational fairness, and calls Medicare’s lack of long-term care coverage a “scandal”, advocating more socialised care and higher taxation of wealthy older people. The conversation closes with a brief joking aside about Mitch McConnell.

Key takeaways

Samuel Moyn argues the US is a “gerontocracy” driven by older voters and wealth, not only older politicians.
He supports age limits for office and suggests youth quotas to broaden generational representation.
He proposes increasing the weight of younger voters’ ballots based on their longer policy horizon, while saying he is not advocating stripping older people of the vote.
He claims New Mexico’s 2024 primary electorate had a median age of 72, using it to argue low-salience elections skew older.
He says campaign donors and wealth concentration among older Americans shape candidate selection and policy outcomes.
He rejects cutting Social Security as a route to intergenerational fairness and instead favours higher taxation on wealthy older people.
He calls Medicare’s exclusion of long-term care coverage a “scandal” and argues for more socialised care.