How much is your right to vote worth to you?
Fact Check and I are having an interesting debate in the comments to this post. My position, basically, is that governments have a moral reason to allow citizens to renegotiate the terms of their relationship with the state. I’m not going to restate Fact Check’s response, as I’d probably just get it wrong, but he seems to disagree with me.
We know that the state protects our rights, but it also imposes responsibilities on us that include paying taxes, obeying stupid laws, and sometimes even military service. It’s helpful to think of the relationship between citizen and state as a kind of contract, with the state doing X for us in exchange for us doing Y for it.
I think that, at least in the ideal world, people should be able to renegotiate their relationship with the state, giving up certain rights in exchange for being released from at least some of the obligations the state imposes on us. At the extreme, I envisage multi-tier citizenship. Full citizens get a full slate of rights — including the right to vote and to hold public office — but also a full slate of responsibilities, perhaps up to and including the responsibility to serve in the military. On lower tiers, citizens give up certain rights (like the right to vote) but also face fewer obligations. For example, by giving up the right to vote, you might get a lower tax rate than those who are full citizens and who retain that right.
Obviously, the state has no incentive to renegotiate the contract with its citizens in this way. However, morally speaking, that doesn’t let the state off the hook. Presumably, in liberal societies, free choice is highly valued. However, most of us have not actively consented to our current arrangement with the government. We stay because the option of leaving is unattractive, or simply because we haven’t given the matter much thought. By giving people other options, the state could increase the role of actual consent and also increase the degree of connection people feel toward the government.
The idea is that the less you feel like your relationship with the government has been forced on you, and the more you feel it was the product of free and informed choice, the more likely it is that you will feel committed to the state. And, indeed, if a person’s relationship with the state really is the product of genuine consent, then he has a greater obligation to fulfill the terms of that relationship than he might otherwise.
Hence, the title of this post: How much is your right to vote worth to you? For myself, the answer is: not very much. If it meant I could be permanently released from having to pay the GST, or any other federal sales tax, I would gladly forfeit my right to vote. If I could get exemptions from certain federal laws, I would also give up that right.
I would not give up the right to free expression, freedom of association, or any other basic, non-political rights, of course. But there are certain rights we hold as citizens of Canada/the U.S./etc (and not simply as human beings) that are pretty much worthless to me. These are the rights I would be willing to jettison if it meant I could keep a greater portion of my income.
How about you? How much is your right to vote worth? What other rights would you be willing to give up in exchange for other benefits?