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But as long as they get to vote, sure they argue about politics but, at least from my personal observation, the participation is mostly about feeling as if they participate, and very little about outcomes and certainly not about what happens after they vote. Like if they get little of what the6 say they want, sure they grouse, but it’s not like they’ll do much more than tantrum on social media and talk about lying politicians. So the median American “votes”, fails every time to get politicians to do what they actually want done … and are mostly perfectly okay with it. That’s not “caring about the vote” so much as “caring that they get to cast a ballot every couple of years.” Which is different, and furthermore doesn’t bode well for the predictions that people will get upset about their district being rendered non competitive. They still get the parts they care about: the process of casting a ballot, the ability to complain, the constant need to stay informed so “they know how they should vote.” The only part missing is the steering wheel being connected to the wheels. It’s like those little car-seat steering wheels kids have. The kid is perfectly content with turning the little wheel and couldn’t give a care that it doesn’t do anything to the car.
And really, for most human behavior, the truism holds that if a person really truly cares about something, they’ll find a way to do it. If they really cared about local politics, they’d find ways to participate, it’s not impossible. Yet nobody cares about that stuff. If people thought that politics was important, they’d at minimum know who sits on these various boards and committees, who’s mayor and which county ward they live in. They’d know the issues and vote accordingly. It doesn’t happen. Turnout for city races is somewhere near 25%, board meetings are not full of citizens concerned about the issues. Unless some sexy national issues come up, nobody attends school board meetings. Real politics is a ghost town, nobody knows or cares what happens there.
My hypothesis is that the modern hyper fixation on federal politics is bike shedding writ large. It's easy to have a strong opinion on federal issues (name one). Local politics deals with practical, boring questions about zoning, school bonds, and such. We spend way too much time arguing over the easy-to-understand bits (what color should the bike shed be), not on most of the details of governing.
It’s also the things that even in a direct democracy you’d personally have very chance of actually having much input on the issue. It’s the perfect way to get credit for being “concerned about the community” while having no real requirements to understand anything. It doesn’t matter, and you won’t be held responsible for making a mess of things. So you get to argue about it, thus appearing knowledgeable and caring about “the issues”, while facing absolutely no consequences if you get your way and are wrong. Call it M’aiq’s Law. The more visibility the debate has and the less responsibility anyone has for getting it right, the more likely people are to debate it.
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