Voting Reform: A Progressive Voting Scheme | Eastern NC Now

    The Constitution was written for those in whose name it was cast - "We the People." Why was it written for the People? As the Preamble explains, it was written so that people and their posterity would know what to expect from their new government. Basically the government would protect citizens from internal strife and from attack from the outside, but most importantly, it would defend individual liberty. In other words, the Founders did not establish the Constitution for the purpose of granting rights but rather for the purpose of protecting rights.

    Thomas Jefferson, who drafted our Declaration of Independence, understood that there are certain rights fundamental to the idea of man being free and because it is our Creator who is responsible for life and because those rights flow from our humanity, governments have no power to take them away and instead, must be obligated to protect them. Drawing inspiration from philosopher John Locke, whom he studied intently, Jefferson believed that government is morally obliged to serve people, namely by protecting life, liberty, and property, and our government, as based on limited powers and the principle of checks and balances, was crafted to protect these fundamental rights. The Declaration was initially written to read: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, endowed by the Creator with certain natural rights that among these are the Enjoyment of Life and Liberty, with the Means of acquiring and possessing Property, and pursuing and obtaining Happiness and Safety." This language was believed, especially according to Virginia's George Mason, to be a literal improvement of Locke's phrase "Life, Liberty, and Property."

    John Locke stressed that private property is absolutely essential for liberty. In his Treatise on Government, he explains that the primary reason for men to organize themselves into societies and to institute a common government is for "the Preservation of their Property." He wrote: "Every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his." Certainly, the right to property and the right to the fruits of one's labor (including compensation) are as fundamental a right as the right to life itself.

    Locke believed people legitimately turned common property into private property by mixing their labor with it, improving it. He insisted that people, not rulers, are sovereign, which also happens to be the bedrock principle underlying our Constitution. Government, Locke wrote, "can never have a Power to take to themselves the whole or any part of the Subjects Property, without their own consent. For this would be in effect to leave them no Property at all." He makes his point even more explicit: rulers "must not raise Taxes on the Property of the People, without the Consent of the People, given by themselves, or their Deputies." Thus, according to Locke, an individual's labor, his intellect, his personality, the good will he earns through his honest and ethical conduct, and the fruits of all of these are his PROPERTY and are to be protected with the greatest zeal by any legitimate government.

    Locke went further and affirmed an explicit right to revolution: "Whenever the Legislators endeavor to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience, and are left to the common Refuge, which God hath provided for all Men, against Force and Violence."

    In 1772, John Adams wrote "The Rights of the Colonists," which he delivered to a Boston Town meeting. He started his historic document with these words: "Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature." As the colonists were British subjects at the time, Adams further wrote in his essay: "The absolute rights of Englishmen and all freemen, in or out of civil society, are principally personal security, personal liberty, and private property."

    Arthur Lee of Virginia (1775) wrote: "The Right of property is the guardian of every other Right, and to deprive the people of this, is in fact to deprive them of their Liberty." William Blackstone, the great British legal scholar, wrote: "So great is the regard of the law for private property, that it will not authorize the least violation of it; no, not even for the general good of the whole community." Ayn Rand, author and philosopher, wrote: "Just as man can't exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one's rights into reality, to think, to work and keep the results, which means: the right of property." Thomas Jefferson wrote: "To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father's has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association - 'the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.'" He also said, in his 1801 inaugural address: "A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of the laborer the bread he has earned." And finally, Frederic Bastiat, a French economist, wrote: "Each of us has a natural right - from God - to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of one is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two."

    Prior to 1913, the government operated with revenues raised through tariffs, excise taxes, and property taxes, without ever touching a worker's paycheck. The Supreme Court has classified income tax as a direct income tax. Apparently, in enacting the 16th Amendment, legislators ignored the pesky little problem of States' rights and the concept of federalism. After the government attempted to enact a peace-time income tax following the Civil War, the Supreme Court, in Pollock v Farmer's Loan and Trust, 157 U.S. 429 (1895), declared it unconstitutional. Referring to the explicit prohibition against direct taxation in Article I, the Court argued that the income tax would excessively enhance federal power in relation to state power. But in an effort to "soak the rich" and attempt to strip them of at least some of the power they held, the 16th Amendment was passed despite the important Constitutional principle it violated.

    In his book "The Income Tax: Root of all Evil," Frank Chodorov explains why taxes on income and inheritance are different in principle from all other taxes: "The government says to the citizen: 'Your earnings are not exclusively your own; we have a claim on them, and our claim precedes yours; we will allow you to keep some of it, because we recognize your need, not your right; but whatever we grant you for yourself is for us to decide.'"

    As Larry Arnn and Grover Norquist wrote in their 2003 article in Claremont entitled "Repeal the 16th Amendment": "Although the first income tax in 1913 was very limited - it applied to just 2% of the labor force, and its highest rate was 7% - it prepared the way for the federal government's almost unlimited access to revenue. It thus provided an almost unlimited ability to fund programs that are properly state matters--crime fighting, education, welfare--and to pressure the states into conforming to a national standard in matters that should reflect regional differentiation, like speed limits and drinking ages."

    The Problem:

    The nation currently faces a crisis not only financially, but also of conscience. It also faces a crisis of Constitutional proportions, under both the very language of Article I and under the Equal Protection Clause which requires that laws must be applied equally to all Americans. In 2009, the Democratic-led Congress enacted a series of tax reforms and generous exemptions and tax credits and then in 2010, it passed the gargantuan economic stimulus bill. The result of these reforms, credits, and stimulus bill is that millions of Americans have been dropped from the federal tax rolls. A huge number of Americans are simply no longer affected by the federal income tax. Before these tax reforms, 47% of Americans were already not paying income tax. Now this number is about 50% and shows every indication of continuing to climb higher. As if that weren't enough, the bottom 40% of income-earners actually receive a cash payment from the government at tax time - "the Earned Income Credit." This is a re-distribution of wealth in its most recognizable form and is not covered under the "General Welfare" Clause. Hence it is not a legitimate exercise of Congress's powers.

    To make matters even more unfair, those who are required to pay taxes often have to spend quite a bit of money on tax compliance. A recent study shows that taxpayers spend an astounding $431.1 billion annually on such compliance. How large is $431.1 billion? It's more than the dollar value of all the goods and services produced in a state such as Virginia or Michigan.

    Under the Obama administration, many Americans accustomed to paying their share of federal taxes are being taken off the tax rolls. Recent tax law changes mean that for the first time, in 2009, a family of four making $50,000 can pay no federal income tax at all. A family at this income level has surely suffered in this recession, but should they really pay no federal income tax at all? By the way, can you guess which political party they will now side with?

    The fact is that America has become divided between a growing class of people who pay no income taxes and a shrinking class of people who are bearing the lion's share of the burden. Despite what critics have said about former President Bush that the tax cuts enacted in 2001, 2003 and 2004 favored the "rich," these cuts actually reduced the tax burden of low- and middle-income taxpayers and shifted the tax burden onto wealthier taxpayers. Everything the government does continues to shift the tax burden onto wealthier taxpayers and at some point it has to stop before the notion of fundamental fairness we so treasure in this country is made a complete mockery of.

    The current mindset of the Democrats and progressives is dangerous and alarming. It goes against the fundamental principles of our founding documents. Democrats and progressive politicians have turned John Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country" on its head. And telling so many Americans that they don't need to make sacrifices for our government, as we are now saying, is dangerous new territory for our nation and for the health of our democracy and economy.

    Furthermore, by placing the tax burden so heavily on a certain class of Americans and continuing to do so by excluding so many others, the situation is almost tantamount to institutional slavery, or involuntary servitude (to be free only when he or she retires, loses his job, or takes a job at a very low pay). In other words, a taxpayer can only be freed from this immense burden (over 4 months of the year are spent in financial hock to the federal government) if he or she betrays her own conscience and inalienable right to pursue the career of his/her own choice. The 13th Amendment promises that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, shall exist within the United States."

    Recognizing that there is an inherent laziness and "degree of depravity in mankind" which will unfortunately flourish greater in a republican form of government (James Madison), we would expect non-taxpayers to behave as they do. Their demand for entitlements and government programs is naturally insatiable because they don't care at all about the cost. Others are providing the funding who, in their eyes, have "more than enough." Consequently, they will always support increasing government programs as a long as they get even a small benefit from them because it does not cost them a cent. And so they will support politicians who favor more spending. Representatives who need the support of such persons to be elected will continue to take from the pockets of others to provide to this solid voting bloc.

    Therefore, by taking more and more Americans off the federal tax rolls, Democrats and progressives are creating a permanent base of supporters for themselves. In doing so, they have abused the progressive income tax too flagrantly and too unashamedly. Many years ago, when Americans were Christians and God-fearing people, they knew it wasn't right to take something for nothing. They knew they should not look at what another has and covet it. But Americans are a new breed and 'honor' isn't a word that's used much anymore.

    At the rate Democrats and progressives are going, hard-working Americans can never expect their tax rates to go down. And it has to stop now, in the name of fundamental fairness and with reference to the Constitution and the reason the nation was formed in the first place.

    Just as Democrats are catering to the needs of their voter base, Republicans must now begin to look after the interests of their voters.

    The Solution:

    We've talked about disenfranchisement and about class warfare. We've looked at the fundamental values underlying our nation's founding and we've looked at the problem created by our broken, unfair tax system. At its core, the problem isn't about how much one group thinks the government should take from another group to somehow satisfy some subjective notion of 'fundamental fairness,' the problem is about the audacious and arrogant "right" of the government to take what it thinks it needs from people in the first place. And if the government is going to take from some without taking from others, then there must be constitutional safeguards put in place to legitimately protect the interests of that former group with respect to the latter group. That is a legitimate "fundamental fairness" issue and one that our Constitution in fact does demand. The question becomes this: What is a fair way to safeguard the interests of taxpayers against those who do not pay?

    For all the reasons above, I make the following proposal. I propose that voter rights be subjected to the same arbitrary and progressive rules that property rights are. Just as the tax burden is assigned on the ability to pay, the weight of an individual's vote should be assigned based on the 'stake' that person has in government policies that will potentially diminish his or her property rights. In other words, the weight of a person's vote should equal the amount of skin that person has in the game. A person with a lot of money might be taxed more but he also should have a greater say in what the government does with his money as opposed to someone who has contributes nothing.

    So how would this play out? Well, everyone is entitled to the "equal opportunity" to vote so every citizen of legal age would automatically get one vote. Additional votes would be allotted, progressively, according to the amount of property subject to government regulation and according to the amount of money the citizen would be required to turn over in taxes. For example, every taxpayer who owns a house might get a second vote. Every taxpayer who owns a business would get a third vote. Every taxpayer who experiences a jump in the tax rate gets additional votes.

    Notice that I didn't say that everyone has the constitutional right to vote. While most Americans believe that we possess the "legal" right to vote in this country, the fact is that our Constitution only provides for non-discrimination in voting on the basis of race, sex, and age in the 15th, 19th and 26th Amendments, respectively. The US Constitution contains no affirmative individual right to vote nor is it protected from the forces of government in the Bill of Rights. The 10th Amendment to the Constitution states: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the State, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Since the word "vote" appears in the Constitution only with respect to non-discrimination, the so-called right to vote is a "state right." It could be argued, however, that the right to vote underlies our other fundamental rights because it protects them and therefore it is an affirmative right. In fact, voting rights protect all other rights and privileges in this country. But it was the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore (2000) which reminded us that there is no explicit or fundamental right to suffrage in the Constitution. Chief Justice William Rehnquist had this to say: "In the eyes of the [Supreme] Court, democracy is rooted not in the right of the American people to vote and govern but in a set of state-based institutional arrangements for selecting leaders." Even more, the Court stated: "The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States." [So, for example, if President George Bush lost the case, the Florida legislature could have discarded the 6 million popular votes cast in Florida (either real or by "hanging chads"!) and been within its legal authority to select a panel of electors of their choosing to vote for President. It was Republican at the time, so following this hypothetical, it would have made sure that Bush got the electoral votes].

    Only an amendment to the Constitution - a "Voting Rights" amendment - can correct the flaw in our system highlighted by the Bush v. Gore case. Only a constitutional amendment would give every American an individual affirmative citizenship right to vote and not one subject to any limitations by the state, such as a residency requirement. ("You must be a resident in the state for at least one year in order to vote.")

    Consider this proposal for a 28th Amendment:

    SECTION 1: All citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, shall have the right to vote in any public election held in the jurisdiction in which the citizen resides. The right to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, any State, or any other public or private person or entity, except that the United States or any State may establish regulations narrowly tailored to produce efficient and honest elections.

    SECTION 2: The weight of each citizen's vote shall be determined in accordance with the liability to which he or she is subject to the laws and regulations of the federal government because of property ownership and earned income.

    SECTION 3: The District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall elect Senators and Representatives in the Congress in such number and such manner as it would be entitled if it were a State.

    SECTION 4: The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

    Why is a progressive voting scheme necessary? It is necessary for essentially two reasons: (1) to ensure that interests are fairly and proportionally represented; and (2) to ensure that checks are in place to force Congress to be responsible with people's money. American taxpayers will soon face a crisis of no longer being fairly represented in government because the percentage of Americans who have no tax liability are reproducing at a faster pace than those paying taxes and welfare is becoming a way of life rather than a short-term necessity. Persons with no tax liability and no "skin in the game" are voting to spend other people's money. They have no "stake" in the decisions of the government to spend taxpayer money or to raise taxes. It simply doesn't matter to them. (When their programs get threatened, they can just hate the rich more and claim they aren't "paying their fair share"). These non-taxpayers lack the proper nexus to the "checks and balances" that keeps government responsibly tied to person's property. As a result, Congress will continue its out-of-control spending. Oh, it may talk about cutting the rate it is increasing its spending, but it won't stop the ridiculous enlargement of programs and the irresponsible spending. Congress doesn't have a taxing problem; it has a spending problem. It sees hardworking Americans as an unlimited source of revenue - but only those that make what the government deems is "enough." And then that burden is enormous.

    As I've already discussed, the federal income tax is a direct tax on property and therefore an unconstitutional burden on inalienable personal freedoms. The right to property and the right to the fruits of one's labor (including a paycheck) are as fundamental a right as the right to life itself. The Declaration of Independence gives each individual the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness (embodied in all types of property), and under the US Constitution, the federal government MUST protect these rights equally for all Americans. Yet the government has not done so.

    Our Founders created a republic form of government to protect the rights of minority groups from mob rule, but they never expected other groups of Americans to be required to support them through forced and regulated charity (spreading the wealth or redistribution of wealth). There is indeed a Constitutional crisis when fundamental rights are treated so shabbily. There is indeed a Constitutional crisis when fundamental rights are treated so differently between and among groups of Americans. We've gone through many crises in our country when civil liberties and fundamental rights were not respected equally and we've put laws in place to remedy the situation. Yet when it comes to money, our government and courts can't seem to apply the same notions of fundamental fairness and equality, even though money is intricately tied to more precious fundamental rights.

    We have undeniably sunk to a new low in "punishing" productive behavior - such as investing in education, conducting oneself morally and ethically, building a career, and making the necessary sacrifices in family life to move up the corporate or business ladder - through excessive taxation. Such productive behavior used to be the ones that defined Americans. That's not the case anymore. The character of Americans has changed. The dynamics in this country are changing. There is an old saying which goes something like this - If you punish those who work hard and raise their families right, they will start having less children, and if you reward those for being lazy and being freeloaders, then they will have more children. And that's what we are seeing. We are seeing a shift in the distribution of those who are contributing and those who are taking and it doesn't bode well for the country and especially for taxpayer. Our financial bankruptcy is finally catching up with the depth of our moral and ethical bankruptcy.