> How is one to vote when neither major party candidate was pro-privacy?

That's the heart of the matter. The major parties have a virtual monopoly; we're as trapped as voters as consumers are in a market monopoly.

I think the way we fix this is weaken the monopoly of the major parties, possibly with things like ranked voting: http://www.fairvote.org/

Which Maine is trying to institute: https://ballotpedia.org/Maine_Ranked_Choice_Voting_Initiativ...

Perhaps we should try to institute laws that break up parties if they get too big the same way we can break up corporations that are too big? Monopolies being bad an all.

It's not like the major parties woke up one day and put forth Clinton and Trump and told the plebs "vote one or the other". The US especially has a very extensive election process, with the party primaries and all, plus, there are also minor parties which do get votes. Is it really true that out of all the democratic and republican candidates at the primaries, and out of all the minor party candidates, none of them were pro-privacy? Or more likely, some of them were pro-privacy, but people voted for others because they don't see privacy as the be-all end-all of life issues.

I don't think the ~15% of people who are at poverty level care as much about privacy as they do about getting a better job or getting proper healthcare, for example. You'd have to form a pretty strong voting bloc just to offset those votes.

Beware of blaming the system when the more likely problem is that enough people don't care about the issue.

There's definitely something to what you say. At the same time, it's a multi-faceted problem and the two party monopoly is one of them.

The problem is career politicians, not necessarily tge system. Public offices should have limited terms.

I'm torn on this issue. If they have limited terms, then they can't play long-term political games and that seems like it should simplify the system. But it also means that at the end of the last term they could more easily disregard their constituents in favor of some last minute lobbying-endorsed legislature.

> How is one to vote when neither major party candidate was pro-privacy?

You vote 3rd party for someone who is and bitch at whichever major candidate wins regardless (which is why they resort to form letters, so at this point its newspaper outlets/townhalls/etc).

Democracy doesn't end at the voting booth and you have to put continual, sustained effort to create change. Look at the GOP running and hiding from their townhalls over Healthcare. Imagine if that was for privacy-related issues (or whatever). Sure, it may not work with the GOP but the Democrats might seriously consider adopting it to try to split voters away from the GOP.