Say you live in a two-party first past the post system. If what you want to express is "I like privacy regulations", the single bit of information that your vote conveys does a very limited job of communicating what issues you actually care about.
The signal in traditional voting is very diluted.
You vote on a person that you think supports some of the things you care about. You are not allowed to weight in on individual issues in a way that matters.
The person works for several years, and the only feedback you have on that process, the only tether that holds that person accountable, is whether you vote for them the second time.
How many EU countries run a "two-party first past the post system" nowadays?
If you are in a first past the post system, and in a safe seat, vote for one of the no-chance-of-winning candidates who best represents your views. Although they won't win, the fact that they are getting votes will be noticed and the main 2 parties will respond by adopting some of their policies. E.g. in the UK as more people vote for the Green party, other parties will become more Green to get those votes back, even though the Green party has only ever got a single MP.
Even in a decent PR multi-party system. Our green party for example is environment first, left wing economics second, public transit, pro-agriculture, anti-nuclear, somewhere down the list is internet privacy.
Or maybe I could vote for the labour party, which are centre left economics, pro-EU, pro-housing expansion, pro-healthcare investment, pro-environment, somewhere down the list is internet privacy
The idea that there's a party that (a) both has the same views on all issues as you do, (b) has sufficient votes to get seats and (c) orders issues in the same importance you do, for everyone, is clearly not valid. More parties = more choices, and this is often better, but ultimately we'd end up with de facto direct democracy to have a party with the exact views for every person.
Similarly, even for myself, I consider internet privacy important. Maybe I should vote the for the pirate party then? Except I consider the environment more important and our pirate party is so small that it hasn't even considered a position on non-privacy related issues, never mind have an adequate plan for how we're going to make a transition from a heavily fossil fuel based power supply. Even on that environmental issue, I think the green party's anti-nuclear stance has historically been a mistake, but if the others are just going to build more gas plants, I'll deal with it.
More like if it was a choice between two, shitty giant douches and one was painted orange and the other was painted with a rainbow. They’re both the same thing with a different color paint.
The signal in traditional voting is very diluted.
You vote on a person that you think supports some of the things you care about. You are not allowed to weight in on individual issues in a way that matters.
The person works for several years, and the only feedback you have on that process, the only tether that holds that person accountable, is whether you vote for them the second time.