Voting may not be considered traditionally a “human right” or “civil right,” but it is clearly a means to that end so that the interests of all groups of people in society are balanced.

I was just talking with Scarlett Swerdlow the other day, and she made a distinction between civil rights and civil liberties that was pretty good.

Civil liberties, she says, involve things that are natural to you and exist outside of government. Like free speech is a “civil liberty”, because we don’t need the government to grant it to us, we naturally have the ability and thus right to speak.

Other things, like voting, she says are “civil rights” because they involve the relationship between government and its citizens. Without government there is no voting, so the idea of voting is essentially tied to government. So other issues of equality under the law would be put in here.

Human rights… I suppose if you want to break them down, then that would probably be used for issues like the ‘right’ to a warm bed, a good meal, to be free from violence, etc. At least that’s the way the term is often used. More of the protectionist side of things.