A couple of weeks ago, Pro-Capitalist posed the thought experiment Should people on (unemployment) benefits be allowed to vote?

The basis of his argument, and I’m paraphrasing here, is that by allowing those who are ‘net receivers’ of government money to choose how it is spent ensures we are stuck in a cycle which perpetuates Milton Friedman’s third law of spending money:

“I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch!”

You can read his thoughts in full – as well as the debate in the comments – for yourself. What I am going to do is take his thoughts to the logical conclusion

Should anyone who is a net beneficiary of tax-payers money have a stake in how it is spent?

and see if such a policy could even work.

Before I even attempt to answer the question, it would perhaps help if I indicated who I believe to be a net beneficiary of tax-payers money. In simple terms I am referring to anyone whose remuneration (including employer’s NI) from governmental sources outweighs that from non-governmental sources.

Taking Pro-Capitalist’s position as a start, this means expanding the net to include all governmental benefits, e.g incapacity benefit, child benefit, tax-credits, housing benefit et al.

But it doesn’t end there. By only singling out those who are getting State handouts without (in many cases) doing any work, we are forgetting all of those who are directly employed by the State, e.g. police officers, teachers, members of the armed forces, NHS staff, those in Whitehall etc as well as those who are (allegedly) in charge*.

At this point no doubt any civil servant reading this will be be yelling at the computer saying “But I pay taxes!” There is only one correct answer to this: “No you don’t. Any tax you pay from non-investment income is illusionary, a tactic to make you believe you have some stake in the system.”

The final group we can add to our list of net beneficiaries are those in receipt of a State Pension but not of private or (non-tapayer funded) occupational pension. This will seem harsh given that the propaganda for many years has been that paying NI over the course of a working life is supposed to mean there is a pot of money with your name on it for when you retire but, as is so often the case, the propaganda is wrong and all of that money was spent in the year it was taken from you.

What we have then is proposal which would disenfranchise a very, very wide pool of people.

But what about the voting? At the present time we have elections nationally every four or five years (supposedly every five years from now on). Added to this we have elections for some or all of the European Parliament; the devolved assemblies of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales; county councils; unitary authorities; borough councils; parish councils** plus the odd referendum.

Having defined our terms, we now come now to the practical issue of how to implement the proposal.

Which is where, as with everything, the problems arise.

With the changes after the last general election, all of the elections I’ve listed (and I’m going to ignore by-elections) are now on a fixed term cycle. Thus logically we should determine who is/isn’t a net beneficiary – and thus allowed to vote – over the course of that cycle. This then throws up our first spanner: how?

Voter registration is currently undertaken by local authorities on a ‘by household’ basis, although this is set to change as the government is planning on moving to a system of individual voter registration in order to clamp down on voting fraud.

In our new system how are local authorities going to check who, of those applying for a vote, is eligible? I can’t see HMRC and the DWP taking too kindly to processing Yes/No requests from councils for the almost 50 million people over 18 who might qualify. The two aforementioned organisations could make their data publicly available to all councils but I can’t imagine anyone liking that idea, even if the government exempted itself from the DPA over it. How about then we ask everyone to present P60s covering the preceding requisite number of tax years at registration? Works for those on PAYE but no-one else. It also doesn’t detail any benefits received so would be no use in cases such as those claiming working tax-credits.

Is there then a simple way of working out how to square this circle without completely reforming the entire tax and benefit system? Not that such a thing wouldn’t be a good idea…

Assuming that a way can be found to figure out who is or isn’t allowed to vote based on their reliance or not on the public purse, we then come to the elections themselves.

For a general election, checking tax paid against benefits is fine. After all it is national government which levies income taxes. But what about the others?

The European Union is (mostly) funded by contributions from member countries. As that contribution is paid for from the taxes of the revenue generating sector, the sensible option would be to base the vote/non-vote on the same criteria as the general election.

Looking at the local and regional elections though, is net income a valid approach? They are all funded by grants from central government with local councils adding to this via council tax.

With the central government grant being a redistribution of national taxes from the centre to the regions, does this mean that people in those areas which distribute more than they receive (London for instance) are eligible to vote in every local election around the country? I can’t see that idea going down to well!

How about then for local elections we use the measure of who pays council tax? It is chargeable on all properties within the area not wholly occupied by those in receipt of council tax benefits, those who are excluded from paying it (students, armed forces serving abroad) and those properties which are subject to probate/unfit for habitation.

Working out who is eligible vote based on those criteria would appear to be much simpler. Yes, in some areas you’d have a lot of second home owners who would be eligible but they own the property and pay tax on it so why shouldn’t they be?

What I can’t work out though is who would be eligible to vote in the assembly elections. As no portion of their income is raised locally*** it would seems that they should be treated like general and European elections and based on the national taxation paid by people residing in those countries.

I’m sure there are answers to all of the issues I’ve come across (and I doubt I’ve found them all) but can they be found within our present system?

Indeed, would it even be desirable to do so?

Answers in the comments section please.

* I’m not including the employees of RBS, Lloyds-HBOS etc and the other nationalised banks here as their salaries are not paid out the pubic purse.

** I suspect I’ve probably missed a level of ‘representation’ somewhere.

*** Yes, I know Scotland has the ability to vary income tax by up to 3% of the basic rate but it has yet to be used.