I voted for the “harm reduction” vote in the 2016 Presidential election. Mar Roxas wasn’t great, but he was better than Duterte. Surprise, surprise, Duterte won. Hundreds of thousands died.
For the 2022 Presidential election, I voted for a principled vote for Leody de Guzman. Surprise, surprise, the Marcos dynasty returns to power.
Then people are treating Biden/Trump round 2 as top priority. Newsflash, if democracy was at stake in the election, then you don’t have democracy. I’ve been watching the Biden administration from afar. Biden, Trump, they’re the same. Same killer police. Same concentration camps at the border. Same prison industrial complex. Same trans genocide. Same abortion bans. No meaningful climate action. And now, a genocide in Gaza. Biden doesn’t care. Voting isn’t harm reduction.
So you voted twice and the harm reduction canidate you voted for was not elected. A lot of harm was done by the winning canidates, which were not the harm reduction once. I believe the problem in that case is that the harm reduction canidate was not elected.
Seriously voting takes less then an hour of your time. It is rather easy and if it actually works the consequences can be powerfull. Here in Germany you can really see the differences in new renewables construction depending on the party in power in a given area and time. In the UK there was a wondefull graph showing waiting times for the medical services under Labour(going down) and the Tories(going up).
As for the US there are referendums on a lot of issues, which are run at the same time as big elections to make things easier. Those can have big results. That is how California HSR referendum was done at the same time the first presidential election Obama won was held for example. That was a big win for climate and transport in California and certainly worth going to the elections for. At that point making some more crosses takes something like a minute and worse case they are both corporate dicks and at best the one you voted for actually does something good.
This reeks of privilege. Voting takes an hour? I wish! Some people line up the whole day and forego a day of wages. It’s easy? Sure is, but people vote for political dynasties all the time, and the political dynasties have an interest in making sure their voters have an easy time voting and their opponents a hard time. Referendums? There’s literally a referendum going around funded by dark money and unknown patrons to open up the economy to international “investors” (really, crooks).
It is absolutly a privilege to be able to easily vote and be able to make a difference with it, but that makes it all the worse to throw it away instead of using it for good.