
Patrick Henry, portrait by George Bagby Matthews c. 1891 after an original by Thomas Sully (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The “right to vote” is only a corollary of the constitutional guarantee of a republican form of government. In fact, voter requirements are necessary to protect that right, and that includes taking reasonable measures to prevent a person from voting twice, making sure the person is eligible according to age, citizenship, and so on. If you cannot trust that these reasonable measures are taken, then you cannot trust that your vote counts as such.
The “Blessings of Liberty” were mentioned in the Preamble to the US Constitution as one of the purposes of said Constitution, but Patrick Henry and some of the other more astute among them did not regard them as enough, which is why they demanded the Bill of Rights, which explicitly declare a list of what they thought of as the most sacred natural individual rights.
The “right to vote” is is not a “right” in the sense of an individual’s liberty. You can respect all the natural rights of an individual –the right to the free exercise of one’s religion, the right to free speech, the right to free press, the right to peaceably assemble, to petition the government for a redress of grievances, the right to keep and bear arms, to BE secure (not “feel” secure) in their persons, papers, and property, and so on.
Those are an individual’s rights. The individual’s rights are a law higher than any particular government or tribe or nation, or any laws. The “rule of law” is the idea that any government, or the people entrusted with governing, should be subject to the same laws as everyone else.
The right of speech is absolute. If the SCOTUS had respected the right to bear arms with the same attitude they brought to the right of free speech, they would never approve “reasonable” restrictions on it.
What would be a “reasonable” restriction on the right of free speech? There is none.
But even there, we see the addiction of people in government (an institution that has a monopoly on the legal application of force). The laws that criminalize thought, also known as “hate speech” laws, are a case in point. Tax laws that make special rules and set up special privileges and restrictions and provide concessions of speech, these are another example. Why should a charity have a censorship muzzle, why should any group of private citizens (unions, corporations, hobby and professional associations) have any restrictions at all on their individual rights?
Jesus Christ’s lesson to his disciples, then and now, were in what he said about the tax collectors of the day. His apostles conceded that the tax collectors’ own children did not pay taxes, so he said, “Then are the children free”. He told his disciples to pay the tax, not because of some Romans 13 principle (–ARE YOU LISTENING, PREACHERS?–), but “lest we offend them” (Matthew 17).
Taxpayers pay for elections. They are not free.
People who do not help pay for their vote do not have the same stake in protecting individual rights as to those who have something to lose. They also do not have the same stake in the rule of law.
In the long run, historically, it is better materially to be beholden to a private business in a free market economy, than to be beholden to a government. Over the long run, if it did not buy loyalty, government would not protect the poor from poverty at all, or from anything else.
For example, when caring for the poor came in conflict with caring for the party hierarchies, it is not hard to guess who gets the care priorities, with all the rationalizations and justifications. Instead of going to the one who pays for it, it goes to the one that I told you to give it to. Which way is more “just”?
Again, a good guideline is always the Golden Rule, in dealings both with individuals, and it also works among nations.