I am deep in MAGA country (Trump won this county with 70%). All of my local elections are single person.

I do vote in my local elections. I think the problem is actually too much money in politics. The oligarchs support and donate an infinite amount of money to campaigns. That leaves genuine candidates with nothing and little exposure.

I think we should severely limit how much they can donate to campaigns as well as having ranked choice voting, which can help people vote for candidates they like without "throwing" their vote away.

However, the democrats didn't put up kamala against others in a primary for us to vote for. She was simply selected. Moreover, the last time Bernie ran, the democratic party basically sabotaged him. There are deep issues that we need to solve.

Despite everyone on Lemmy saying otherwise, people didn't stay home because of the genocide. Most Americans don't give a fuck about what's happening in the next town over, let alone in Gaza. They stayed home because they weren't given a convincing self-serving reason to make the effort to vote.

TBF if we lived in a democracy there would be no protest, because most people want the progressive policies over which they were protesting.