Votes for cash: poll tax

Executive summary: People should pay to vote.

Numbering the people

When the people of Israel were numbered, that had to be accompanied by a payment:

When thou takest the sum of the children of Israel after their number, then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul unto the LORD, when thou numberest them; that there be no plague among them, when thou numberest them.
This they shall give, every one that passeth among them that are numbered, half a shekel after the shekel of the sanctuary: (a shekel is twenty gerahs:) an half shekel shall be the offering of the LORD.

Exodus 30:12-13

Every person had to pay half a shekel. Failure to do this would lead to a plague, which is what the “no plague” part is about. And, as it happens, when David neglected the proper manner of numbering the people, a plague indeed did follow:

And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.

And God was displeased with this thing; therefore he smote Israel.

So the LORD sent pestilence upon Israel: and there fell of Israel seventy thousand men.

1 Chronicles 21:1, 7, 14

Joab, the commander of the military, who was tasked with doing the numbering for David, found the king’s commandment repulsive (1 Chronicles 21:6 … “the king’s word was abominable to Joab.”) and he knew it was a trespass (1 Chronicles 21:3 … “And Joab answered, … why will he be a cause of trespass to Israel?)

There is not a lot of explanation provided for why a census should be accompanied by payment, but it’s not hard to think of a few reasons:

• A prelude to war: if you’re about to go to war, you want to know how many people you can expend in the effort. When there’s an emergency, you throw everything you have at it, but numbering when there’s no emergency says you’re planning something bad. If everyone must pay to be part of the war, then you have to face the backlash sooner.
• A prelude to abuse: Joab found the king’s commandment repulsive (1 Chronicles 21:6 … “the king’s word was abominable to Joab.”) Once you know how many people there are, you may be inclined to tax them, take their stuff in salami slices, etc.
• A pointless burden: Taking people away from their work to participate in being counted is stupid. It’s stupid to do, it’s stupid to participate in, and it’s stupid to get a result.
• Quite possibly having someone go throughout every tribe and lay hands on every person is going to spread whatever sickness someone has. Having the priests do the counting is a better idea, because the priests at least know the difference between clean and unclean. Well, they should know.
• The money matches the people: you can count the money, or the people. You are more likely to get an under-count than an over-count.

It’s a great idea: when you number the people, let each person pay.

Modern voting

Voting is basically the same as numbering the people, except that the people are also sorted into a very few groups according to whatever the vote is for. If people had to pay to be numbered in the past, then it is reasonable that paying to vote could work in the present.

The following problems would be solved by paying to vote:

• A lot of fraudulent voting will be eliminated: if the price of fraud is actual money, there will be less of it. Want to vote a hundred or a thousand times? That’s going to cost you a hundred or a thousand times. It’s dead easy to change a number in a column, but it’s not as easy to produce a half shekel per vote.
• The money count must match the vote count. If a region submits more votes than money, then they have too many votes, and they can be disqualified.
• The money count must match the vote count. If a region submits more money than votes, then they have perverted the votes, and can be disqualified.
• Self funding: since the voting process produces its own income, the administrators of the vote do not have to have the approval of government, but can do their work without intimidation.
• Equality: if everyone that votes pays the same amount, then that is a message that all people are equal: the rich do not pay more, neither do the poor pay less.
• Democracy is the rule of the majority, and the majority are stupid. Forcing the majority to pay for choosing their rulers will eliminate the stupidest part of the voter pool, because they will rather keep the money.
• Votes for women: women are not stupid, but they have better things to spend their money on than voting. Roll back a hundred years of feminism, just like that. Women should not vote anyhow: I suffer not a suffragette to usurp authority over the man.
• We pay tribute to receive justice from government as they bear the sword against evil doers, so if we’re electing the government, it makes sense to pay at that point.

Why not do it?

There are a good number of reasons that this is not going to happen in a hurry:

• A fraudulent voting system keeps the current socialist rubbish going: they are not going towards more accountability, but less: electronic voting has zero accountability.
• People will do something that costs nothing to get something that is free. If that something costs real money, they will not as easily seek free things from it. The illusion of free stuff is what keeps the voting scam going.

Not paying to vote means that every time we vote, we are struck with a plague of elected “representatives” that we didn’t necessarily elect, who don’t represent us.