Voting. Taxation without representation. Rights or privileges?

Great Debates
1

A felon isn’t allowed to vote while on probation. At least in most states. Or all. Not sure but this still applies if it’s only one county in any jurisdiction.

Does that make voting a right or a privilege? Rights according to the US Constitution are “inalienable”. Meaning they can’t be taken from, or denied from, a human being. Well, American human beings, but you get my point. I hope.

Driving is a privilege. The state grants you the privilege to drive a car. If you drive drunk, speed too often, tear into a shopping mall because Sbarro was out of the special, they can suspend your license. I don’t see any rights violations there.

Owning a home is also a privilege. Apparently. If you don’t pay the local government a yearly fee for the land YOU OWN, they’ll come in and take it over and kick you out. And if you don’t own a home but just a dirt field? Well you better pay on that too. You own it, as long as you pay the government. Who really owns it? Not you.

But voting is a “right”. A right can’t be taken away. For anything. It’s a right, not a privilege.

So how can we refuse the right to vote to a person because of a criminal record? Or rather, the status of their record? A felon can vote in (most) states, but not if on probation. If you’re a felon you can vote. Just not while you’re on probation?!? Really?

Let’s go a step further. You’ve come with me this far. A felon can’t vote, but still has to pay income taxes, social security, state taxes, sales taxes, Medicare and Medicaid taxes, property taxes, gas taxes, etc. All while never getting to vote. Isn’t this taxation without representation? Isn’t this a major reason the colonists revolted and created this country?

2

No, I haven’t really.

People use the word “right” about something they want to be allowed to do no matter what. People use the word “privilege” about something they think you should be allowed to do until they decide you should be stopped.

These words are, by and large, just rhetorical weapons; means of attempting to avoid a debate about the substance of an issue. As in: "No, I don’t want to engage with you on the subject of why I should be allowed to do this, it’s just my right. So there. End of discussion."

In the end, there are laws that control things and those laws say certain things. What those laws say is the beginning and the end of your rights and privileges, subject to those laws being changed or declared invalid.

And whether change to those laws is appropriate should, IMHO, be a matter of looking at the substantial issues involved. Not deciding on the basis of arbitrary categorisation of certain things using certain words, like “right” or “privilege”.

3

You might have a point for other reasons but not for the one given in the last paragraph. Plenty of people must pay taxes who nevertheless cannot vote. Examples include children (if they have substantial income) and resident aliens.

4

I wouldn’t call voting a privilege, but it’s not quite a right either, except to the extent that everyone who meets the qualifications is entitled to vote. It’s more equivalent to the right to work than the right to say, free speech or assembly. Everyone has the right to work if they meet the qualifications to legally work in their community.

5

The Constitution says no such thing. For one thing, it’s the Declaration of Independence which talks about the “unalienable Rights” of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And the Constitution–the Bill of Rights, in fact (Fifth Amendment)–by implication clearly allows for people to be deprived of their rights to life, liberty, or property–so long as the person is deprived of those rights with “due process of law”. Thus, under the Constitution, voting can be a right, even if we don’t let felons vote, since felons are accorded due process before being punished (trial by jury, right to confront witnesses, right to counsel, the presumption of innocence, etc.).

I don’t think felons who have served their sentences ought to be disenfranchised, but barring felons from voting certainly doesn’t somehow transform voting into a “privilege”.

6

However, unlike Bill of Rights freedoms, voting is only available to citizens in most cases. So even if we call it a right, it’s not at the same level as say, freedom of speech or right to trial by jury.

7

Just to carry on with the picking of nits, not only does the “unalienable” language come from the Declaration of Independence rather than the Constitution, but also it doesn’t mean what the OP thinks it means.

An inalienable right is not one which cannot be taken away; it’s one which cannot be given away. The Dec. of Ind. is proclaiming a notion of citizenship in which the citizen cannot surrender his rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - i.e. he has a responsibility in this regard; he cannot simply abandon or abdicate these rights. And that responsibility is being invoked to justify (in this instance) rebellion against the Crown.

But “representation” =/= “voting”. And the revolutionists understood representation as a communal thing; a member of the assembly did not represent the individuals who had voted for him, but the community which had sent him to the assembly, including those members of the community who had voted for him, those who had voted for another candidate, those who had chosen not to vote and those who were disqualified from voting, e.g. on the grounds of age. Taxes had to be voted by representatives of the community; as long as this was so the taxation was legitimate; it did not matter that there were members of the community who had not voted for the representatives or who had not voted at all.

On this view a disenfranchised felon is not taxed without representation, because he is represented by his congressman and his senators. The fact that he didn’t vote for them is immaterial; most members of the community, one way or another, didn’t vote for them. Nevertheless, they represent the entire community. (That’s the theory, anyway. In practice they may understand their duty to be to those who pay their campaign expenses. But that’s a different problem.)

8

Such rights are inalienable but may be abridged for one reason or another.

9

Voting is a right in that if a state takes it away from you unjustly and you’re a citizen, the Constitution strictly mandates that it be punished in the form of loss of representation at the federal level. The mandatory punishment only applies if you’re over 21 and a man, but other amendments extend that right to vote to everyone who is over 18 and has not had their right to vote stripped on conviction of a crime. It’s just that if you’re a 19 year old or a woman and you’re illegally banned from voting, Congress is not obligated to dock your state’s census count as it would be if you were a 21+ year old man.

The fact that this has never once been enforced does not make it anything less than the supreme law of the land.

10

But the Constitution sets out some minimum qualifications that don’t give states a whole lot of room to make their own.

First it says that every male citizen at least 21 years old can vote in elections that are held for “electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof” unless they’ve had that right taken away because they committed a crime or participated in a rebellion. It does this by mandating punishment for states that take that right away. If someone else must be punished for doing a certain thing to you, that surely means you have a right to not have that thing done to you.

Then, too many years later, the Constitution was amended to say that states were forbidden to make being the proper sex a qualification for voting. So, now it’s just citizens at least 21 years old who haven’t rebelled against the government or committed a crime.

Then a few decades later, the Constitution was amended to forbid states from taking your age into consideration unless you were under 18. So now it’s citizens at least 18 years old who haven’t rebelled against the government or committed a crime.

11

There are also residency requirements. Even if you’re a citizen, you can only vote where you are a resident, and some states require residency for a certain period of time, which means that when first moving you can legally be disenfranchised.

12

The Declaration of Independence is aspirational. It has no legal force, and it is not an exercise in logic.

13

There are non-felon, US citizens who can’t vote. Just ask any American who was born overseas and has never lived in the US. They pay US taxes, but can’t vote (some states allow you to use your parents residency to vote, but many do not).

14

It’s right that they can’t vote, but they should not be paying taxes. I believe that the US is the only nation arrogant enough to charge you taxes for being a US citizen, no matter where you are. THat’s treating people as subjects, not citizens.

15

Nicely stated.

16

Lots of people can’t vote. I don’t like it, but there it is. I don’t get too worked up over it though because voting is mainly a symbolic gesture, and otherwise a waste of time.

17

Hey, Eritrea does it too!

18

Are there any “rights” that are truly granted without any possibility of legal restriction?

I have a right to free speech, but I can’t yell “Fire!” in a theater or distribute child porn.

I have a right to religion, but I’m not allowed to conduct human sacrifices.

Heck, I can be compelled into military service!

I could keep going almost indefinitely. I can’t think of anything that truly fits the OP’s assertion that “A right can’t be taken away. For anything. It’s a right, not a privilege.” So it seems to me that the problem lies in that assertion. It’s just plain wrong. All rights can be taken away and all rights have some limitations. The difference between a right and a privilege is that one of them takes four more letters to spell.

19

Not really. A right can only be limited if there is a compelling government interest and if the law that restricts the right is narrowly tailored to serve that interest, and if there were no alternative means of serving the interest that do not infringe on the right in question.

A privilege can just be revoked arbitrarily.

20

Not arbitrarily. Withdrawal of a privilege (say, driving) can still be challenged under rational basis review (which specifically prohibits “arbitrary and capricious” enactments), or even elevated/strict scrutiny depending on who it’s taken from.