The author has, as it happens, spent years arguing against this view, suggesting that abstaining from the voting booth is a perfectly acceptable choice for the liberty contingent; and many non-voting libertarians do just that, despite the fact that a Libertarian Party has existed and run candidates since the early 70s (the Party's first ticket featured the philosopher John Hospers and Tonie Nathan, the first woman and the first Jew to receive an electoral vote in a presidential election). For a large segment of the liberty movement, a libertarian political party has always seemed to be a contradiction in terms. Libertarians are, after all, devoted to and focused on principles, and the political process itself regrettably seems to be antithetical to many of those that we hold most dear—for example, the idea that each individual is sovereign, that his property is his to manage, that trade and other associations should be strictly free and voluntary.