Who should be allowed to vote?

It’s an exceedingly simple report:

In the new INSA Sunday poll commissioned by Bild, the AfD remains the strongest party at 26 percent, even though it lost one percentage point compared to the previous week. (…) In all age groups from 18 to 59, the AfD is consistently the strongest party. Only among voters aged 60 and older does it rank second.

– apollo-news.net, Oct 28, 2025

This new poll does not break results down by gender, but earlier studies certainly do.

In the last federal election, the AfD was twice as strong among young men as among young women. Conversely, the Left Party received twice as much support from young women as from young men.

– handelsblatt.com, Sep 17, 2025

A cynical wit might be tempted, in light of these findings, to exclaim:

Ha! I knew women’s suffrage was a mistake!
– a fictitious cheeky scoundrel

Or, as an example from a not-so-fictitious contemporary:

You meet a man between 30 and 60, who has regular employment and is ethnically European? 50% chance he votes for the AfD.

– @KraZMagazin, Oct 28, 2025

Awaken your inner historian for a moment and ask him what this description reminds him of—this “man between 30 and 60, who has regular employment and is ethnically European.”

Allow me to help!

Mesopotamian City-States

In these times, when German democracy is already being replaced by a totalitarian elite state called OurDemocracy, one might soon forget that what we used to have was not “the” democracy in the original sense, either.

Democracy is a Greek word: δημοκρατία. Literally: rule of the people. The first literal mention appears in the 5th century BC with Herodotus. Yet the earliest precursors of democracy were practiced as early as three millennia before Christ in the Mesopotamian city-states (see English Grokipedia).

In Mesopotamia, five thousand years ago, free men gathered to make decisions for their city-state.

And even in the democracy of ancient Greece, it was free men who voted on the welfare of the state. Only male full citizens of Athens were eligible to vote—free, adult men with Athenian parents. Women, children, slaves, and resident foreigners were not allowed to vote.

In Athenian democracy, only about 10 to 15 percent of citizens were actually eligible to vote!

Simple question: In what way is universal suffrage better?

The complication of this simple question lies in the ambiguity of the word better.

As I explain in Relevant Structures, (potentially) ethical terms like better mean that a relevant structure is being strengthened.

It is good to motivate a child to learn, because it strengthens the relevant structures of children and our shared future.

But which structure is strengthened by universal suffrage?

Simple answer: Universal suffrage strengthens the legitimacy of the outcome.

The purpose of universal suffrage is to allow politicians to say: “Ha ha, you all voted for us, therefore we are entitled to dispose of you all as we please.”

Universal suffrage is not justified by the claim that it best serves the relevant structures of country, people, and prosperity.

For More Efficient Slaughterhouses

In a democracy, it is the majority that decides the government (at least in theory), but as I already noted in 2018: “The majority is rarely right, but often wrong.”

According to Plato, democracy leads to the rule of the ignorant, as the masses are driven by desire. According to Tocqueville, democracy is the tyranny of the majority.

“We are more,” German sheep like to chant when incited by their butchers to demonstrate for more efficient slaughterhouses.

But Goethe already knew:

Nothing is more repulsive than the majority; for it consists of a few vigorous leaders, of scoundrels who adapt, of weaklings who conform, and of the mass that rolls along without the slightest notion of what it wants.

– Goethe, Maxims and Reflections

A well-known bon mot says: “Democracy means that two wolves and one sheep vote on what’s for dinner.” – There is painfully much truth in that.

Indeed, as the above polls show, democracy today means that the lazy, the miserable, and the ignorant decide how to take the fruits of labor from the few diligent and responsible ones and redistribute them among themselves.

In the Ancient Greek Sense

“Our democracy” inevitably means a totalitarian state of injustice and the rule of elite cliques.

“Democracy with universal suffrage and constant propaganda” – in lived reality, might that not mean the rule of the lazy, the ignorant, and the easily manipulated?

A democracy in the ancient Greek sense meant the rule of the truly responsible.

It’s a simple truth: If we practiced democracy in the ancient Greek sense, the AfD would have a comfortable governing majority.

On the other hand: if responsibility and reason determined majorities—and thus politics—in Germany, the AfD would never have been necessary in the first place.

Universal lack of reason or universal suffrage – a country can afford only one of them.