Earlier this month, Louisiana residents made history by swearing in the first female to the office of governor.

While some may view this as a major, progressive change within the state’s political sphere, symbolizing a move in a new direction of central planning and regulation, I believe the election is a perfect model on which to comment on the democratic process as a political system and the changing tide in voter attitudes.

Traditionally, the social apparatus of compulsion and coercion, or government, within a democratic republic is the result of an election in which the majority vote attains dominion.

Individuals living in such a democratic republic are mollified by blindly assuming that such a form of government is “rule by the people,” as indoctrinated.

But democracy, being nothing more than an arrangement of the monopoly force concentrated within the state, is not much more a demonstration of freedom than any other governmental scheme.

The system is merely a mask for coercive rule of one group over another wherein a portion of the population gets the opportunity to choose its oppressor, the next interim aggressor seizing an illegitimate authority to “govern” individuals and “plan” the economy throughout the land.

And it is an illegitimate rule that no individual in this land agreed to.

To any individual begging to differ, I would pose the question as to when and where any one of us signed a constitutional contract to bind our person and property to the state.

You may be asking yourself now, what does the outcome of the Louisiana gubernatorial election have to do with this much-condensed critique of democracy?

Although, as an economist, I speak in terms of theoretical truths that do not need empirical evidence to be proven,

I feel that the statistics of the recent election say more about the face of democracy than I have room for here.

The victor of the recent election was chosen by approximately 52 percent of the 50 percent of voters who cast ballots.

These voters are but a half of the 60 percent of the 4.7 million people composing the population of Louisiana that are registered voters.

In other words, the governor-elect for the state of Louisiana is the representative candidate of about 16 percent of the state’s population.

I believe that this is the two-fold sign of a new ideology emerging among people throughout the country and obviously in this state.

First, more and more registered non-voters are choosing the “none of the above” option in light of the fact that, secondly, they are realizing that the future only holds further taxation and inefficiencies within the public sector.

Hence, the surge of individuals choosing not to vote, what some may call “voter apathy” is actually quite the opposite an apathetic reaction. Rather it is the manifestation of an ever-growing portion of the population refusing to give in to the system that continues to steal, manipulate and sabotage the coordination of individuals we refer to as society.

~ Erich Mattei is an economics senior