In addition to all of that, my personal experience has been the following:

Setting: 2016 US Election

  - Everybody is screaming in my ear all day every day "YOUR VOTE COUNTS, GET IN THERE AND VOTE"
  - Tons of people go to vote
  - The candidate with the lesser number of votes wins the election

And that's why I don't care to vote anymore. I don't know enough about politics, social sciences, or whatever the fuck else gobbledygook to take a stance on whether or not this result makes sense.

All I know is, simply put, my vote feels worth nothing and so I now deafen myself to politics as much as possible. Much more worthwhile to focus energy on building businesses and making money that I can donate to charity rather than wasting away in my armchair yelping about politics proven to be outside my control.

As someone from a rural area (my vote likely had more weight) in the state where a third-party candidate got 20% of the vote (Utah, McMullan), I'm not sure I feel much differently. There are simply a lot of people out there, not to mention all the ones who didn't vote.

It's frustrating to be surrounded by those who think conservative media is not only flawless, but the only source of truth, who feel cornered to vote for a candidate that they don't believe in because they feel beholden to our two-party system. If we could simply make those individuals feel confident in the ability of their vote, we would get right out of the two-party system.

As bleak as things are, though, I haven't given up. To do so would be to give up my liberty to these idiots, without a fight.

As someone smart and technical enough to hang out on HN, if your argument for dropping out of the political process boils down to “I can’t be bothered to understand how my country’s electoral system works”, that’s pretty weak.

On top of that, people don't realize how little the federal government (Presidential Election) affects them, nor how much their local elections affect them. Our local elections here get 4,000 votes per candidate. In a city of 120,000 people that's pretty much shit. Your local and state elections impact your lives substantially more than anything at the federal level.

Whether or not your city closes/opens drug/alcohol treatment centers or homeless shelters will affect your life much more than Trump boasting about how he's going to build a wall.

Indeed, plus it's in our best interests to get involved in local govt. because our voices are much easier to hear at that level. At the federal level, your vote is competing against 300 million other citizens (assuming they all vote, which isn't the case). If you're considering a town of 30k, voicing your opinions and making meaningful change is much more realistic.

Heck, the town supervisor from my hometown lived on the street right behind us. Growing up, it would be possible to hop across the fence in the backyard and be in his yard. Talk about access to your representatives.

Too much emphasis is being placed on the federal govt., which I believe is a terrible trend for all of us Americans. Trump made a huge wave of anger after withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, but there is nothing stopping my home state from making their own ad-hoc agreement (of course, states do not have authority to engage in international diplomacy, but I'm speaking about the principle of, say, NYS committing itself to a zero-carbon emission pledge within XX years, and setting goals for all the towns and cities to help contribute).

Federal doesn't matter, until it does. It's decisive, for example, for war and peace. Those tend to have rather large effects on people.

Even without considering the lives lost, both American and foreign: The Afghan & Irak war have cost $5 trillion over the years. That's $60,000 for every US family of four that could have been put to other uses if those wars had been limited to a fast and cheap campaign against the Taliban government.

USA military doesn't do fast and cheap. The whole point of the operation was to funnel trillions of dollars to armaments manufacturers and their sockpuppets in media and politics. If Afghanistan/Iraq hadn't had that potential, they would have agitated for War in some other unfortunate locales.

That is really a good point, how many people know what their local government spends money on. If politicians aren't being watched, they will steal.

More pointing out that 3/4's of the votes are effectively meaningless.

Don't forget China holds elections, but that does not mean people's votes count.

The presidential election is not the only one. Even if you live in a solid red or blue state, there are issues at lower levels of government that impact you more directly, and that you in turn can impact.

So vote for every position that's not the president. i.e., the ones that matter.

The local school board members cannot invade other countries, or lower taxes without paying for them (essentially raising taxes on my children).

If local elections really "mattered", I'm sure the two party system would have found a way for the people of Florida and or Ohio to "elect" them for me.

Local election seem to matter to RWA/"conservative" types who want to include intelligent design, anti climate change in their school books or put 10 Commandments monuments in public spaces.

(Insert an observation about Alabama here)

I'm not super familiar with American politics but I've come to realize that voters who want more "omph" should vote in the primaries.

The republican primaries had 31M votes. The presidential election had 137M. In the primaries voters also get a wider selection of candidates to choose from.

I don't know if there is anything preventing voters from participating in both the democrat and the republican primaries. If it's allowed I'd just pray that two great candidates win in the primaries and not fret to much about the presidential election.

>The apathy, desperation, political violence/polarization, filter bubbles, poor economy for the average person, rise of the new alt-right, antifa, and resurgence of the extreme/alt-left all make me feel like a collapse is coming.

There's no such thing as the "alt-left".