We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

- US Declaration of Independence (emphasis added)

The United States has always had an uneven tension between its ideals and its practices. Deciding who gets to vote — who gets to meaningfully express or withhold their consent — has been a source of recurring friction since the founding of the republic. Much of this is due to the messy intersection of our founding ideology and the reality of our Revolution. We like to think of ourselves as the first broadly inclusive modern society, the first nation to cast off monarchy and aristocracy, replacing those governing relics with self-rule and independence.

In reality, the Revolution was sparked over infringements against the rights of property, not humanity. It was a tax dispute that went wildly out of control, not a fight for bread. Many of the freedoms that we take for granted today — the freedoms we assume our Founding Fathers fought for over two hundred years ago — were too unimportant at the time to even make it into the initial draft of the Constitution. That’s why the Bill of Rights are the “Ten Amendments” instead of the “Ten Articles.”

Given that, it’s no surprise that the first people granted the right to consent in the brave new republic were, for the most part, (almost exclusively white male) property owners and taxpayers. Property rights, after all, started the Revolution, and it was the property owners that had the biggest stake in protecting them. It didn’t take long, however, for that initial 6 percent of the American population to realize that they might find support for their preferred policies among the disenfranchised. Consequently, by 1840, only North Carolina, Rhode Island and Virginia still required voters to own property, and only Pennsylvania and Rhode Island required voters to be taxpayers at the start of the 20th century. The right to vote was, at least in theory, extended to non-white people by the 14th and 15th Amendments, then to women by the 19th Amendment, and to Native Americans by the Dawes Act.

In practice, unfortunately, the old tensions often remain.

After the Dorr Rebellion in 1842, native-born citizens were no longer required to own property to vote in Rhode Island, but naturalized immigrants didn’t receive the same rights until 1888. Poll taxes and literacy tests were restrictions used to considerable effect by several states to keep the poor, especially poor black people, from receiving the right to vote. Though poll taxes and literacy tests are now a thing of the past, thanks to Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, moving polling places or changing where voter registration takes place consistently and measurably changes voter turnout, and, hence, the outcome of at least some elections.

Expanding the right to vote didn’t always go according to plan for other reasons, too. As Richard Franklin Bensel notes in The American Ballot Box in the Mid-Nineteenth Century:

In the middle of the nineteenth century, many adult men simply could not comprehend the broad relationships among party, policy, and their personal stakes in the national political economy. Illiterate, impoverished, and often culturally isolated from that part of American society that we might term the "public sphere," many men came to the polls with little or no idea of how politics might significantly shape their lives.

Unsurprisingly, many of these voters were ripe for exploitation from the party machines of their era. It’s a short leap from providing useful social services to the poor, like Tammany Hall did, to granting government jobs to political supporters, like Tammany Hall did. Consequently, when one of my colleagues muses that he’s “always thought that while voting should certainly be convenient, it maybe shouldn’t be too convenient,” I appreciate that it’s said with an eye toward history and a desire to avoid some of the messier excesses of democracy.

Ultimately, our government is staffed by people we vote for — and it’s that same government that keeps deciding who gets to vote and who doesn’t. The anti-Irish New England state governments didn’t want naturalized immigrants voting in their elections — they would have voted them out! The Jim Crow southern state governments didn’t want poor whites and black people to vote — they would have voted them out! How much suffering has been delivered by the hands of our various local and state governments because they decided which people they are held accountable to…?

This brings me to Question 5.

Question 5 is, at its core, a measure that increases efficiency and, contrary to what some might think, helps reduce instances of voter fraud (even if widespread voter fraud is a myth). Currently, when residents change their address at the DMV, they either have to fill out a separate piece of paper or go to the Secretary of State’s Online Voter Registration site to update their voter registration records.

Question 5 would require the DMV to automatically alert the secretary of state and the resident’s county that the resident’s address has changed so that the voter registration records match. This helps insure the integrity of our voter registration data and ensures that everyone is voting for the candidates that will actually represent them. Otherwise, people could move to one address and vote as if they still lived at their previous address. Best of all, it makes voter registration easier and more convenient. It’s a win-win all the way around.

The catch? Question 5 also requires the DMV to automatically register people to vote unless they opt out of it. Certain people are concerned that this may lead to green card holders trying to register to vote (but that happens now and we seem to manage) — and, when that line of attack doesn’t go anywhere, they bring up privacy and consent (“agency”) concerns. These latter concerns were the ones that Gov. Brian Sandoval ultimately chose to stress when he exercised his first veto of last session when he said, “The decision to mandate compulsory application for voter registration by the government is better left with the public, who will be subject to its requirements.”

Unfortunately, Sandoval has it backwards. All of us are subject to the requirements of living under the governments of the State of Nevada, plus the county and municipality in which we reside. The state of Nevada and its constituent governments, in turn, are subject to the requirement to be accountable to those it governs and to continuously seek to secure their consent through the ballot. And, as our forebears figured out in the 19th Century, and as political scientists now model mathematically, a person won’t vote when the cost of voting — or maintaining the right to vote — exceeds the probability their vote will matter (times the benefit of their favored candidate winning) combined with their feeling of civic duty.

Our current voter registration and election system incurs costs: time and the work of filling out paperwork or online forms with multiple state agencies — together equaling one’s overall personal tolerance of dealing with bureaucracy. Consequently, it’s far too easy for the people currently in charge of running our government to perpetuate their hold on power by increasing the costs to vote. It’s simple economics: raise the price of a good, watch as its demand at that price decreases. And in this case, the government is our only supplier.

As someone who enjoys being diligent in my research of my sample ballot, I’m sympathetic to those who wish only we, the diligent, were able to vote. However, our government governs all of us, diligent or not, bureaucratically comfortable or not, experienced in the voting process or not. To quote a recently registered voter in California:

You are not a bad person because you haven’t gotten this figured out yet. You are not a failure because you haven’t gotten this figured out yet. You are not less worthy of a voice in our democracy because you haven’t got this figured out yet.

She’s absolutely right. It’s the government’s job to seek your consent, not the other way around. Don’t let the government get away with making that more difficult than it absolutely has to be.

Vote yes on Question 5.

David Colborne has been active in the Libertarian Party for two decades. During that time, he has blogged intermittently on his personal blog, as well as the Libertarian Party of Nevada blog, and ran for office twice as a Libertarian candidate. He serves on the Executive Committee for both his state and county Libertarian Party chapters. He is the father of two sons and an IT professional. You can follow him on Twitter @ElectDavidC or email him at [email protected].