Clip of JD Vance Arguing Childless People Shouldn’t Have ‘Same Voice’ as Parents Goes Viral

In the week since officially becoming the GOP’s nominee for vice president this November, JD Vance’s critics have been resurfacing old videos of him making controversial statements.

From appearances on Fox News blasting “childless cat ladies” to comments about whether or not childless Americans should have the same say in democracy as Americans with children, various clips of Vance’s past comments have gone viral since Donald Trump chose him as his running mate.

On Thursday, the Kamala Harris campaign resurfaced a video from September 2021 of Vance at the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute. In the clip, Vance says:

When you go to the polls in this country, as a parent, you should have more power. You should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic than people who don’t have kids. Let’s face the consequences and the reality. If you don’t have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn’t get nearly the same voice. Now people will say, and I’m sure The Atlantic and the Washington Post and all the usual suspects will criticize me about this in the coming days. Well, doesn’t this mean that non-parents don’t have as much of a voice as parents? Doesn’t this mean that parents get a bigger say in how our democracy functions? Yes, absolutely.

The Washington Post did indeed cover the comments, as Patrick Marley outlined on Thursday exactly what the now Republican senator from Ohio was proposing, “A year before JD Vance was elected to the Senate, he advocated for a novel way to enhance the political strength of families — by giving parents the ability to cast tens of millions of additional votes on behalf of their children.”

Marley added that Vance’s plan “would almost surely face legal challenges, experts in election law said. It would also create logistical hurdles. Election officials would need to track which voters were eligible to cast multiple ballots and regularly update their voter rolls to account for moves, divorces, and court decisions in child custody cases.”

The clip shared by the Harris campaign on X had racked up almost 3 million views in its first seven hours.

Watch the clip above.