This goes to all the peeps who support parliamentary voting as a valid political action.
If your society has been steadily progressing towards fascism for decades regardless of your voting (like the USA has been), is there any point, any action which will convince you that voting ultimately doesn't work?
Is so, what is it? What would your government have to do for you to acknowledge that voting doesn't matter? For many people, it was of course, supporting genocide (which is why so many states desperately try to deny a genocide is ongoing). But if genocide isn't, what is yours?
Eventually a society which has been slowly progressing towards fascism regardless of voting, will become fascist. And we all know what comes after that. There's always one thing where I think even the most hardcore parliamentarian will agree that voting ultimately didn't work: When they're personally being force-marched to the mass grave-sites.
Would that be your point? Or does it come earlier? If so, when?
I agree, it's a terrible shame that people will become so deeply involved with a broken system instead of putting that effort into prefigurative politics, direct action, or mutual aid.
Though at least for some people, the outcome of an election may indeed be a life or death scenario, such as those who may be deported back to countries that may be seeking asylum from political prosecution, or back into living conditions that are difficult to survive in, or women who cannot access a life saving abortion, or the stripping of medicaid for those who have medical conditions that would make it impossible to afford survival.
It also would likely effect the ability for people to unionize or strike, or to engage in rent strikes without legal prosecution.
I will say, at least in this particular election, I don't begrudge people getting politically involved quite so much, since it's not out of the question that one party may genuinely install a full on fascist dictator for life, and that'd suck way harder than the normal fascist-lite we've usually had. I hope that more people will do so with their eyes open as to what they're engaging with this time, and do not become deceived that it is a solution in itself.
But yeah, ultimately agree. Voting should've just been a box you tick quickly in between more important direct action, and it sucks that it ends up being more of what you describe instead.