I suppose the people are trying to vote that the property of others be used for themselves or given to themselves, or they are trying to vote for security or even for whatever good cause (social justice, the environment, etc.) politicians may tell them that the power of the state may be used in the service of.
The Constitution does not give the federal government power to do any of these things, but the federal government has been outside of its boundaries for so many years now, that I can only think that our current freedom is now at its consent, instead of its power being at ours.
The trouble with giving the state awesome power to do good is that it can use that same power to do evil. As Mr. Hayek said, we should not sacrifice our principles for expediency. Having successfully taken power not given it, government still has the Bill of Rights to contend with, but our politicians are doing what they can to smooth that problem over. CFR comes to mind, as does proposed regulation of the internet. Not to mention RKBA. I'm sure that back in the 1700's McCain and the rest of the GOP, in their quest for egalitarianism, would happily have tried to censor handbills, posters, the Federalist Papers, and whatever means of communications existed then.