About half the population doesn’t bother to vote.
The voters are heavily skewed towards the wealthy and privileged, who tend to vote for the more reactionary of the two factions of the business party. That’s of course not enough for the Republicans to obtain the statistical tie they achieved in 2000. They did get a considerable majority of the male white working class vote, women too, but the reasons are important. Turns out the main issues on which they voted were “religiosity” and gun control — not their primary concerns, by far, but the primary concerns don’t come up because on those — e.g., international economic arrangements — elite opinion and popular opinion are generally opposed, so the issue has to be kept off the electoral agenda. In fact, “issue awareness” — knowing where candidates stand on issues — hit a historic low in 2000. That’s not by accident; rather, design. Candidates are trained to keep away from issues and focus on “values” or personality. For good reasons. And the population is aware of that too.
True, there’s no mainstream critique of the whole electoral process. That would be next to inconceivable. Rather, there are enormous propaganda campaigns to try to induce people to vote and trying to make the elections look very serious. We’re right in the middle of them now. They have some success, but it’s limited.
As for whether one should vote, that’s a separate matter.
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