Just Stop: Buying Votes Is Wrong- and It Isn’t Even Working

This article was originally published by Liberty Sentinel.

Parents are hurting.

They watched their kids locked out of classrooms, masked for hours, exposed to ideology they never agreed to, and handed report cards that papered over the learning loss. They trusted their local schools and were betrayed.

Both political parties saw that pain—and both tried to weaponize it.

Democrats reached for the familiar toolkit: cancel loans, expand benefits, promise more federal programs later. Republicans, instead of offering something meaningfully different, reached for their own version of the same strategy: tax-funded “school choice”—education savings accounts (ESAs), vouchers, and “funds follow the child” proposals.

It sounds bold and conservative. In practice, it’s something else.

The line often attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville—though its exact origin is uncertain—warns, “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”

We are living in that day.

And school choice, as it’s being packaged by many Republicans, is a textbook example.

What ESAs Really Are

On paper, ESAs and similar programs look simple:

The state takes part of what it already spends per student. It deposits that money into a government-created account tied to your child. You can use those funds on approved “education expenses,” like private school tuition, tutoring, curriculum, and maybe certain homeschool costs.

The sales pitch is: “We’re putting parents in control. The money will follow your child, not the system.”

But look at how it actually works:

The money is still taxpayer money. Politicians and bureaucrats still decide who qualifies, how much they get, what counts as an “approved” expense, and what rules participating schools and vendors must follow.

That is not free-market education.

It is a targeted vote-buying subsidy aimed at a vulnerable, hurting group—parents who are shocked to have been betrayed by their local schools. It converts parental pain into political dependence by means of a management program masquerading as mercy. It’s the Republican version of what we’ve spent years criticizing on the left: using public money to cultivate a dependent voting bloc.

Instead of saying, “We will fight to let you keep more of your own money and get the state out of the way,” we are saying, “We will design a new government benefit and put your child’s name on it.”

That’s not liberty. That’s management.

Case Study: Virginia’s “Parents’ Ticket”

The recent election in Virginia gives us a clear look at how this plays out.

In 2021, Glenn Youngkin, Winsome Earle-Sears, and Jason Miyares won statewide office on what everyone called a “parents’ movement.” Parents in places like Loudoun, Fairfax, and Virginia Beach were furious over closures, mandates, and curriculum. The Republican ticket read the moment correctly: parents had been betrayed by their local schools and wanted change.

But instead of answering that betrayal with a plan for education independence, Republicans answered it with a promise of “new benefits.”

The language sounded noble: “Parents matter.” “Funds should follow the child, not the system.” “We’re going to give you education freedom.”

Underneath the slogans, the concrete proposal was ESAs and tax-funded scholarships. Take a portion of what the state already spends per pupil and put it into state-controlled accounts that parents can use on private school, tutoring, or homeschool expenses.

Translated into plain language:

“The system failed you, so we’ll let you take some of the system’s money with you—but we’ll still be in charge of the system, and your children.”

That is exactly the dynamic warned about in that old line: “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”

In Virginia, Republicans discovered they could bribe betrayed parents with education money. Not cash in an envelope, but something more respectable: “We’ll put public dollars into an account with your child’s name on it.”

Again, that is not free-market education. It is a management program, incentivized with financial “benefits,” aimed at a vulnerable, hurting group—parents who are shocked to have been betrayed by their local schools.

Did it “work”? For one election cycle, yes. It helped elect a governor and a lieutenant governor who spoke directly to parental pain.

But two years later, what does the landscape look like?

Parents are still exhausted and anxious about their kids’ education. Local schools have not undergone deep reform. And the same electorate that once rallied as a “parents’ movement” handed control of the legislature to the party that openly promised to block these ESA-style programs.

In Virginia, the “parents’ movement” did not translate into durable political protection: in 2025 alone, twelve Republican House incumbents lost their seats as Democrats expanded their House majority by thirteen.

If school choice were a reliable vote-buying strategy, incumbents running on that brand would not be losing in bulk.

These are not random backbenchers. Youngkin, Earle-Sears, and Miyares were the “parents’ ticket.” Dunnavant and Greenhalgh carried that message into the very suburban districts Republicans were counting on to cement a new majority. If school choice and “parents first” branding were a reliable vote-buying machine, these are the people and seats that should have been safest. Instead, Democrats now control all three statewide offices and the legislature—while Republicans have spent years training themselves to think in terms of new benefits rather than new freedom.

How This Strategy Deforms Us

Even where school choice “works” in the short term—an election won, a program created—it works by changing us in the wrong direction.

It turns citizens into clients. Instead of thinking of parents as free men and women who should control their own money and their own associations, they become a bloc to be managed through targeted subsidies.

It puts formerly independent education under state leverage. Once tax dollars flow into private schools, microschools, co-ops, and curriculum vendors, the state has a hook: “If you want to keep receiving ESA funds, you must…” What began as help quickly becomes pressure.

It normalizes the welfare state on the right. When Republicans embrace ESAs as the flagship solution, they stop arguing for smaller government and start arguing for different beneficiaries. The message becomes: “We’re not against redistribution. We just want our people to get their share.”

It hides the cost. ESAs sound like “free money.” In reality, they are funded by taxes someone had to pay—or debt someone’s children will have to carry.

The problem isn’t tactical. It’s moral. We have adopted methods that undermine liberty, justified them because the hurt parents are “our” people, and called it a win.

Repentance, Not Just Policy Tweaks

If that sounds harsh, good. We need sharper language.

Conservatives should not be in the business of bribing the public with the public’s money, even when we’re doing it for people we genuinely love and want to help.

We should be willing to say:

It is wrong to turn wounded parents into a new dependency class. It is wrong to answer institutional betrayal with another layer of state-managed benefits. It is wrong to baptize welfare-state mechanisms in the language of “freedom” and “choice.”

This calls for more than new talking points. It calls for repentance—a turning away from the belief that the state’s money (which is really the people’s money) is our main tool for fixing what the state itself broke.

A Better Path: Education Independence

Rejecting ESAs and similar schemes does not mean ignoring hurting families. It means doing the harder work of pursuing solutions that actually work.

Instead of saying, “We’ll give you a government account,” we should be fighting for:

Lower taxes, so families keep more of their own money to spend directly on their children’s education.

Legal and regulatory freedom for homeschooling, church schools, co-ops, and microschools—without tying them to state dollars.

Private scholarship networks funded by churches, businesses, and philanthropists, where help is real, but control does not belong to the government.

A culture of education independence, where parents understand that the safest education is the one least entangled with the state.

Parents do matter. Their pain is real. Their betrayal is real. Their desperation is real. This is exactly why we must not try to buy them.

If we truly want to serve families and preserve the American republic, we have to stop using the public’s money to bribe the public—whether the bribe is a stimulus check, a loan bailout, or an “education savings account.”

The conservative answer to broken schools cannot be a new dependency program.

It has to be what it always should have been: freedom, responsibility, and independence.

Appendix: Virginia “Parents & School Choice” Republicans—Who They Were and What Happened

Written by:

Lauren Gideon

Lauren Gideon is the Director of Government Relations at Classical Conversations. With a background in education advocacy and a passion for restoring parental authority and responsibility, she works at the intersection of faith, freedom, and education policy. Lauren writes to inspire thoughtful dialogue around reclaiming educational independence and strengthening the family’s central role in a flourishing society. She is also passionate about the church’s role in voluntary benevolence—believing, as 2 Corinthians 9:7 affirms, that generosity should be freely chosen, not compelled.