Is Voting a Right?
There are natural rights and then there are procedural rules designed to protect those rights. Voting is not a natural right.
If your natural rights are being protected/respected, then how is NOT being able to vote an infringement on one's freedoms?
In our country's founding, there were lots of restrictions on who could vote.
As a matter of fact, over two century's we have voted away most of the freedoms enumerated in the Constitution.
On a different front: Often I find myself reminding people who are younger than myself that many freedoms I have lost over my lifetime and the lifetime of my parents, are acutely felt because you had them and took them for granted or the opposite cherished them and they have been taken away. IF you are raised without them, you have no idea what has been lost.
If your natural rights are being protected/respected, then how is NOT being able to vote an infringement on one's freedoms?
In our country's founding, there were lots of restrictions on who could vote.
As a matter of fact, over two century's we have voted away most of the freedoms enumerated in the Constitution.
On a different front: Often I find myself reminding people who are younger than myself that many freedoms I have lost over my lifetime and the lifetime of my parents, are acutely felt because you had them and took them for granted or the opposite cherished them and they have been taken away. IF you are raised without them, you have no idea what has been lost.
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Likewise, so long as we agree to our current form of government, then I have a duty to exercise my capacity to indicate my preference in representation. Not to do so should eliminate my ability to complain about the outcome, not that that is feasible.
However, I can hear the argument that the system is so flawed, the weapon is useless and therefor no honor in the act.
I will say, I felt the removal of voting for a period of time for the guests n this site acutely. It really bothered me.
du·ty
ˈd(y)o͞otē/Submit
noun
1.
a moral or legal obligation; a responsibility.
"it's my duty to uphold the law"
synonyms: responsibility, obligation, commitment; More
(of a visit or other undertaking) done from a sense of moral obligation rather than for pleasure.
modifier noun: duty
"a fifteen-minute duty visit"
2.
a task or action that someone is required to perform.
"the queen's official duties"
synonyms: job, task, assignment, mission, function, charge, place, role, responsibility, obligation...
Unfortunately, in today's world, if you are to protect your liberty it is an action you are required to perform. Loose interpretation...
A person may exercise freedom by not serving to defend the freedom that gives them choice. By doing so, they pass on certain perks awarded to those who do serve, earned by virtue of service. but both the person who serves and the person who does not serve enjoy freedom.
A soldier in a volunteer army does not serve as obligation or coercion, but because they have a sense of duty to defend the system that would give them the freedom to choose to serve or not. They choose to serve and are equal to those who do not serve, but by serving they acquire benefits awarded to those who do serve.
In this country we choose to not link voting privileges to service - only to citizenship.
My personal opinion is that voting should be linked to service. If your voting right is bot worth purchasing by service, you will not value it properly. IMHO
You say “all the ability to vote gives you the "right" for others to turn you into a slave””. No one has the right to turn anyone into a slave. You may give permission to someone to make you a slave but they don’t have the right to do so. They may have sufficient force to capture you, bind you and make you work for them. Capability to do something does not equal the right to do something. Might does not equal right.
There is an underpinning that has not been mentioned and should be.
The right to vote entails having a governmental system that recognizes the basic rights of all people. The right to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. If you live in a dictatorship or Monarchy or Oligarchy that does not recognize these right and actively suppressed them we have a different situation.
Without a government that recognizes the rights of individuals, you are correct, voting doesn’t matter at all. There you have the right to establish a government that does so recognize the rights of people to be free. We did it in `775 (the true start of the revolution) and codified it in 1`776, and finalized in in 1787.
You say “The right to vote is a procedural safeguard. If you have a right to vote, but not a right to your life, what good does that do you? You can't exercise the right to vote if you are not "alive"-except in Chicago. “
If you have allowed the government to deprive you of all freedom, then you have decayed to a state that is in need of recovery. If your vote is meaningless because the government has slowly (or quickly) taken you rights away, you must re-assert you rights and take back your freedoms. You no longer live in a Republic or a democracy. At best you live in an Oligarchy and at worst a true dictatorship. At this point you must reassert your rights.
Consider England at the time of the revolution. If you lived in England, you were represented in Parliament. If you lived in the colonies, you had no representation. You did not have a vote. Having no voice in the Parliament you (the colonists) were effectively slave of he King and Parliament. You had to comply with the laws or face involuntary servitude (prison). The colonies did what needed to be done. They became free.
That is one reason I object to the wording of the 14th amendment. It changes the rights of a citizen to privileges. As you know, Privileges age something given, not something you have.
I disagree it is a right.
What about the right to self defense? Free speech? association? contract? ......see where I'm going
Are there any other requirements? This depends upon the laws of the various controlling authorities.
It seems to me that citizenship is the only requirement. Are you a citizen of the voting region you reside in? If yes you nmay vote. If not, you may not. there are conditions place upon this for criminals and others, but in general, If you live there you may vote if a citizen.
After property rights this is the most important right. (see Khalling follow-up post for more info on this aspect of rights).
(To figure this out, j_IR1776wg, start with the axiom that a right is something for which you do not need to ask permission.)
The simplest and earliest barrier was that in order to vote, you had to pay taxes, i.e, own property. One of the basic problems with that is that merchants typically do not own land, but rent their homes. Also, their inventories often are not their own property. Moreover, the essence of production is human intelligence and there is no way to measure that - or has not been. (Perhaps holding patents or copyrights could be recognized as evidence of production. After all no farmer ever had to prove that their acres were productive, only that they held them and paid taxes on them.)
In _The Secret of the League: the story of a social war_ by Ernest Bramah (1907) after the producers take back the country, they institute a voting mechanism like that of corporations: one share, one vote, with no limit.
make your point cg
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