Failures of modern implementations of democracy: you are not free

The founding fathers enshrined in the Fourth Amendment the belief that all should be "secure in their persons." They believed that all are entitled to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Perhaps this is a leap requiring further support, but they conceived of the individual as self-sufficient and self-governing: each of us is our own Leviathan. The extension to their theory of the individual, or the exception to the rule of self-governance, was the social contract: that is, a contract in which individuals yield some aspect of their own freedom and self-governance in favor of received mutual benefits.

If we have lost the power to vote, are we still truly free?