If you have a one-party system, then all it means that the actual policy choices are made not by parties, but rather by factions or individuals within the one party, so if you want to change things, then the levers of change are obtained not by being a voter (or candidate) and having your party gain positions in the country but by being a party member (or official) and having your faction supporters gain positions in the party.
Its been my understanding that political parties have interests that are completely separate from the will of the people, even though campaigns say otherwise, and no amount of change is going to fix that problem.
Also any changes that come from those institutions follow the real progress that gets made by common people.
"A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote." - Henry David Thoreau
In DPRK there is only one choice on the ballot that you can optionally cross out to disapprove. That doesn't happen often or at all; I suppose they'd know who does it based on the time it takes to vote.
What do you mean by this? If I (a dictator) were to hold an election but require 90% approval to unseat me, that would be a "legitimate" process because it includes voting?
Do you not understand what I am saying?
> What about protesting the system by not voting, does that do anything?
Arguably yes. Afghanistan's state legitimacy collapsed as basically fewer than 10% of people voted in any of it's elections and then the government fell.
The way they've done it for decades where I live, is party A and party B serve the same master on all substantial issues, so pick a "hot button" social issue that neither side will ever do anything about and have A and B take opposing views. Then do some gatekeeping where both parties and the media agree to push hard propaganda that voting 3rd party is "throwing your vote away".
The people in charge are the ones who pick the two almost identical candidates. There will be no change in economic or foreign policy regardless of winner.
(Edited, the other way is to push hard core identity politics where demographic groups are owned by certain parties, so voting has all the legitimacy of a mere census. The only way to influence policy would be having (or not having) children)
> Political apathy comes from the political party that would most benefit from low turnout.
This is very reductive, you've lost sight of the trees and only see the forest. Politically apathetic people have a wide array of personal reasons for being the way they are. You don't know what's going on in all of their lives, you can't reduce all of their life experiences and feelings into one big conspiracy.
but it doesn't matter. all parties pander to a majority to get votes. minority interests are ignored everywhere, and consequently none of the available parties have any redeeming qualities that make them a better choice than the others.
the whole system is broken. the parties waste most of their energy to fight each other instead of cooperating to actually solve problems. i want to throw out the whole lot and replace it with a system that is actually representative of the communities. is there any party anywhere that can achieve that?
At this point in time, on this planet - not as far as I know. It's against human nature. It's why I love Star Trek TNG, as cheeky as it can be at times, it's always reasoning about human behavior and defining its shortcomings. And trying to overcome those.
Maybe the Swiss with their voting on all issues system, are a step in the right direction.
Would you tell people in China, "if you are disappointed with politics, vote in your People's Congress elections?"