The revolution won’t be televised, it will be decentralized.
As we get closer to the 2024 election, politics becomes increasingly dominated by coverage of the presidential election. Pundits naturally gravitate towards national issues as they are relevant to the largest potential audience.
While there is plenty to complain about on a national level, a large percent of what ails us on a day-to-day basis is within our power to control at the state and even municipal level.
The big secret to the federal government’s authority is that they don’t have the manpower to enforce it any more than England had the power to control Scotland without the cooperation of its nobles.
If you control your local sheriff, you can locally enforce the Second Amendment.
If you control your school board, you can end propaganda, stop following federal standards, fire administrators, expand choice, and save millions of dollars in property taxes.
If you take over your county board of supervisors, you could ignore state enforcement of CDC Covid ordinances or the FDA’s regulations on growing and selling produce.
By investing in local races, we cannot only win without abandoning our principles; it is within our power to negate some of the most egregious and debilitating violations of our freedom.
Local laws also offer the opportunity to establish precedent that provides an example that has a cascading effect across the board, as positive case studies lead to broader adoption.
Libertarians believe in decentralization because we are confident our ideas will work and spread if given the chance. Decentralization is counterintuitively the most effective way to secure the universal adoption of principles, at least if you are right.
It would be a shame if libertarians who incorporate this understanding philosophically fail to take action on it politically.
Voter turnout in local races typically ranges from 5 to 20%. There are thousands of these elections decided by 1000 votes or less.
The most surefire way to secure votes is through in-person door-knocking. If done in a targeted manner, you can secure one vote for every seven houses visited.
However, without door-knocking software providing you with registered voter data, party preferences, and walking routes, it will take significantly longer. This kind of tool can be complicated to identify and cost an individual candidate thousands of dollars.
To that end, the Libertarian Party has purchased a national subscription to Voter Gravity; any Libertarian or non-partisan candidate approved by the state party can now get professional canvassing tools with door-knocking software for a $50–500 data charge. If you are looking to run or know someone who is, email vo**********@lp.org to get access.
In two weeks, we will also be releasing professional website templates that candidates can easily fill in to automatically generate a high-quality website.
Once we have this infrastructure set up, we can provide each candidate with a website that would normally cost $1000-$2000, or countless hours for candidates to create for $100.
These scalable solutions can be provided for a near-unlimited number of candidates at little extra cost. Saving $4,000–$5,000 per person and removing barriers to entry that discourage them from running.
Empowered by these tools, small teams of 1–3 people could be winning elections across the country.
These tools are already provided by the DNC as well as the GOP in a less grass-roots-friendly package. For relatively low costs, the Libertarian Party can offer the same or better support for local candidates.
Please donate to LP.org so we can continue providing candidate training, door-knocking software and add more new candidate resources like automated websites.
While spoiler candidates have value in pushing major party candidates to adopt some of our positions, realistic targets create momentum.
Once Libertarians start establishing a record of governance locally, it won’t take us long to get 3–4 state house members, giving us veto power and leverage with one side or the other on close bills.
As our influence continues to grow, we will be in a position to secure national congressional and senate seat wins, giving us a better platform to launch an authentic and disruptive presidential campaign.
Getting more candidates elected also lowers the signature requirements for ballot access, making it cheaper to maintain our presence in the presidential race, which is valuable as a tool for getting our ideas heard and funneling energy into our efforts to get people elected down ballot.
If you are registered as a libertarian but not a registered member, you can become one at lp.org
The path forward is not easy, it was never meant to be. If you share our values, join us in our fight.
We have not given up. We will never give up.
The opinions shared here do not necessarily represent the official position of the Libertarian Party. These editorial articles have been submitted by Libertarians across the country, and featuring these topics does not represent an endorsement of the content therein.
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