| > Making use of roads paved by the public (through tax dollars) is a privilege. But this is where we get into trouble, because then the same logic would apply to walking on public roads. And the only ingress or egress to the vast majority of residences is a public road. Otherwise the place where nearly anybody lives is fully enclosed by someone else's private property. At which point this claim becomes "leaving your house or going back home is a privilege" which is facially unreasonable. It also doesn't align with the way we talk about anything else. If you fail to pay your taxes you don't lose your right to a jury trial just because juries are funded by taxes. If the jury convicts you of tax evasion and the government puts you in jail, the warden will search your cell whenever he wants, but we don't say "privacy is a privilege, not a right" or claim that the government can revoke this "privilege" without due process and conviction of a crime. And you can't get out of this by saying "but you could just walk," because in many cases you can't. The path between many locations is accessible only via limited access highway where walking is actually prohibited. It's the rule rather than the exception for the distance to be prohibitive -- it isn't reasonable to walk from one city to another, regardless of whether or not it is physically possible. |
After all, voting is a right, and if I cannot be at the polling place, I'm entited to vote by absentee ballot. They don't even require a stamp!