If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.
~Emma Goldman

Voting is good and bad for freedom.  In a completely free society, voting would be a non-issue.  The only relevant voting would be in your private life.  You might be voting with your friends on where to go to dinner.  Voting for government politicians wouldn’t matter because either there would be no government or the government would have virtually no power over your life, so it wouldn’t matter who was elected.

In our current society, voting is a cover for politicians.  It makes people feel like they are in control.  In most cases, they aren’t.  People think that as long as there are elections, they are free.  This isn’t true.  You can live in a very oppressive society while retaining the right to vote.  India is an economic mess and they are considered a democracy.  Of course, democracy is part of the problem.  Democracy can mean that the majority oppresses the minority.  The ironic thing is, democracy usually leads to the majority oppressing themselves, while the minority live well.  But the minority makes the majority think they are in control.

There is a positive aspect of voting.  As Murray Rothbard wrote in 1978,


“Until or unless the United States changes from free elections to dictatorship, the question of armed revolution is, at the very least, totally irrelevant to the American scene.”


The only way for the U.S. or any other country/area to achieve freedom is by changing the hearts and minds of the people.  A violent revolution will achieve nothing, but not just because violence is not the answer.  In order to achieve liberty, the majority of the people need to understand and advocate liberty.  And if you get to a point where most of the people are liberty oriented, then the only thing that is necessary is for the people to withdraw their consent.  This holds true whether voting is allowed or it is a dictatorship.  But withdrawing consent is even easier where voting is permitted.


Things have changed a lot in the last couple of years.  With the Ron Paul presidential campaign in 2007/2008, with the power of the internet, and with the horrible government policies, there has been a shift in the general attitude of the American people.  There is a lot of work to do in educating others on the benefits of liberty, but we can see progress and there is much hope for the future.  It is not because we will elect the “right” people, but because people will simply turn away from government and look for other ways to solve their problems.