A real democracy can only provide the opportunity to vote, it can't compel people. Conversely, a disinclination to vote is not proper grounds for preemptively disenfranchising such people. Not only is it ethically deficient, but it's illogical: Not voting may be a vote for the status quo, and a routine nonvoter may in the future become dissatisfied and choose to vote again. The choice to vote must always rest in the hands of the individual; letting the government decide who gets to vote and who doesn't is the most profound conflict of interest for a government of the people.
I think that the implied criticism of nonvoters is misplaced. The reason isn't always just laziness or a failure to appreciate one's duties in a democracy. A lot of people don't vote out of alienation, having become discouraged with our present system, convinced that their votes don't matter, and sometimes that the system's rigged. That's a red flag in a democracy, and we're obliged to pay attention and try to fix it, not to sweep the problem under the rug with sanctimonious criticism. The guiding philosophy of democracy is "trust but verify", and when trust is absent the system is crippled.
I was talking about legislation, and specifically how the power to levy taxes and spend the people's money is vested in legislatures, Congress on down. The power of bureaucrats to levy taxes is strictly limited to the ability to set fees for government services...which is, interestingly enough, one of the Republican planks: Pay-as-you-go government, pay only for what you use and don't subsidize somebody else's government services. You've just pointed out the huge pitfall of that approach because it transfers the power of taxation from the people's representatives to unaccountable bureaucrats. Funding government through fees is very much taxation without representation. Government should be run like a business? Good Lord, gimme a break!
Sometimes I wonder if it's not by design, but I try not to go there.
That's OK, go there. I wrote recently that modern politics leaves me feeling like a rat running a maze constructed by politicians, so I'm inclined to agree with your suspicions. The suspicions are reasonable, especially in a free society which obligates us to vigilance over our politicians, because none of what we're seeing today is really new. Demagogues have used the various techniques of fomenting fear and anger and obstructive dissent and generally creating division, in pursuit of the time-tested divide-and-conquer strategy, since the dawn of time. Politicians today have deliberately broken the cohesiveness of American society in their pursuit of personal and Party power.
You and I are far, far apart on many issues, Lee, but right now we're doing our duty as Americans to map out what common ground we have. And that's a terrible threat to politicians, who demand your personal loyalty, and demand that you hate The Others so that your loyalty and compliance will be absolute and untroubled by doubt or those pesky countervailing opinions. Which is to say, at the end of the day, that what politicians hate most is independent thought.