Voter turnout

[Maxmars]

I have never voted. Mostly for the reasons you highlight. You lay it all out quite clearly.
We are brainwashed to think our vote will change things.
Perhaps at some level we get what we deserve as a collective.
It's all rather sad really.

I can understand the perspective about the futility of voting in todays 'engineered voting construct.' 

But maybe it's just my own cultural programming that urges me to continue participating in spite of the appearances and contrived clownsmanship the political class has engineered to lay over top of it.  Unlike you, I feel the brainwashing about voting is sort of like having to "smile" while a bully takes your lunch money...

Voting should be, and actually is, a very simple thing.  Counting.

Politicians of the 'duopoly' have created a convoluted façade to conceal the fundamentals of it... because they don't necessarily care about the results, and they are not above or beyond exploiting the system... to them voting is not "essential to the process"... the "process" is now orchestrated towards them remaining in power in perpetuity.  ("Continuity of governance")  This is one reason why the media was captured and controlled... to obscure and complicate the "process" (to the point of futility.)

But I still participate as I am allowed, because politicians are like a foolish child with a toy, they will eventually break their own game. 
And we (the people) cannot afford ever to remain silent like pawns and drones, lest they successfully codify "loyalty" as a matter of 'political compliance'... like certain other countries we all know of... at that point the American experiment is over.

If Americans have no voice, America is over and done with.

The political class wants you and I to believe that only "they" have a voice that matters... they want us to stand (silently) at the edge of the cliff... just in case they need to "push."

Voting is the de facto voice you can use... don't abandon it.

(Just my opinion.)