She was previously the party's nominee for vice president in the 1996 election, as Harry Browne's running mate.

She began her career at IBM working with computer systems, leaving to become part owner and President of Digitech, Inc.[5] She received a Ph.D. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from Clemson University in 2002.

She ran as a Libertarian to represent SC-04, in northwest South Carolina, against incumbent Democrat Liz J. Patterson and Republican challenger Bob Inglis.

[9] Before the 1996 United States presidential election, the Libertarian Party nominated Jorgensen for vice president, as Harry Browne's running mate.

After the election, several media outlets speculated that Jorgensen's candidacy resulted in vote splitting significant enough to be decisive in Democrat Joe Biden's victory over Republican Donald Trump, pointing to Jorgensen's vote share being higher than Biden's margin of victory over Trump in multiple battleground states.

[28] In the final debate of the 2020 primaries, candidate Jacob Hornberger accused Jorgensen of "support[ing] the welfare state through Social Security and Medicare".

[35] Jorgensen opposes embargoes, economic sanctions, and foreign aid; she supports non-interventionism, armed neutrality, and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from abroad.

[40] In a Libertarian presidential primary debate, Jorgensen said she would immediately stop construction on President Donald Trump's border wall.

During another primary debate she blamed anti-immigration sentiment on disproportionate media coverage of crimes by immigrants.

[41][42][43][44] Jorgensen has characterized the U.S. government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic as overly bureaucratic and authoritarian, calling restrictions on individual behavior (such as stay-at-home orders) and corporate bailouts "the biggest assault on our liberties in our lifetime".

Jorgensen has invoked the analogy of dollar voting to argue that consumer preferences would shape businesses' policies on face masks in the absence of a government mandate.