[ddevault]

It's not because people aren't voting - it's because our votes are not equal. We don't have "one person, one vote" here - we have "one dollar, one vote", and those with more dollars get more votes. Citizen's United infamously set that in stone. Meanwhile, rampant gerrymandering, court packing, and other anti-democratic tactics have been heavily abused over the past few decades of Republican control to further erode and cement that. Though Republicans are not the only ones accountable - Democrats are just as responsible for accepting PAC money, for instance - and the two party system is mathematically guaranteed to be intractible as a consequence of our voting system. Even if every eligible voter voted in every election, the two party system is an inevitable conseqeunce of any election outcome, and both parties are dogs of the rich.

That the average American has approximately zero influence in politics is a mathematical, deliberately orchestrated truth.

[Kaveren]

> Citizen's United infamously set that in stone.

The alternative is that you can't make documentaries about a candidate's bad climate change policy and monetize it as you would a non-contentious issue.

> That the average American has approximately zero influence in politics is a mathematical, deliberately orchestrated truth.

Neither does the individual "economic elite", defined as anyone in the top 10%.

People can complain about the two party system all they want, but ranked choice voting was just rejected in Massachusetts, the most liberal state there is (and I'd be correct to assume that Democrats have more reason to desire this than Republicans).

Gerrymandering is bad and needs to be disposed of. We aren't an oligarchy because there's some gerrymandering.

Money in politics is vastly overrated, and there isn't even that much money in the field to begin with. Bernie Sanders didn't lose his 2020 primary because of money, Trump didn't win his 2016 primary because of money.

[ddevault]

Ranked choice was rejected in MA because it was poorly explained to voters and they voted against it because they didn't understand it. A vote against ranked choice is a vote against your best interests, and that's an objective fact.

[akerl_]

It’s not really debatable that money has an influence in US politics and elections. It’s also pretty clear that for presidential elections, votes are not equal for people living in different states. But to say “We don’t have ‘one person, one vote’” in this context is pretty blatantly false.

The primary reason that dollars have such an impact on elections is because dollars get spent on advertising and on canvassing and on outreach, and the impact of those things is that it gets your candidate more votes from more people who otherwise wouldn’t have bothered to vote. The way that dollars buy elections is via people voting.

There’s plenty of rational debate to be had about gerrymandering and campaign finance and a whole host of topics, but to throw our hands in the air and say that votes don’t matter is nonsense.