Voting is essential in US. It is also overrated

Protests across America have prompted discussion about the value of different types of political action. There is even debate about how useful voting is. Unfortunately, our political culture and (mostly non-existent) civics education do a really poor job of explaining the role of voting in the US and how it relates to democracy.
Our political culture envisions voting as the fundamental act of democracy. Moreover, it is generally thought of in its ideal form as an individual, rational act.
We’re told to vote the person, not the party. We’re supposed to study the “issues” and base our votes on which candidate comes closer to us on policy questions.
Formal candidate debates are seen as central to campaigns, covering all those issues because that’s a good way for voters to learn how to choose someone who shares their positions. We should pay attention to facts and not emotions — to thick booklets (in the states that produce them) of neutral basic information and not to what we see in political ads.
All of that is mostly or entirely bunk.
Most of us vote for the party, not the person. On most questions of public policy, we loosely adopt the views of our party, rather than choosing the party based on pre-existing policy positions. We act collectively, not individually, when we vote with our party — and we mostly choose parties based on where we think people like us
affiliate. “Like us” may be an ethnicity, job category, religion or something else. We’re not letting down democracy when we do that — we’re fulfilling it.
Is voting the fundamental act of democracy? It’s a fundamental act — but hardly the only one. It’s no more basic than protest marches, campaign rallies, board meetings of organised interest groups, donations to candidates and groups, seminars at think tanks, press reports of city council meetings, lobbying, interactions within a party network, and so on.
It’s difficult to imagine democracy without voting, yes. It’s also difficult to imagine democracy without political parties, interest groups, legislatures, mass media and more.
Furthermore, voting by itself is … well, it’s not useless, but it’s a blunt instrument that can’t really do much. A vote can’t tell the government to reform the police force, let alone give specific instructions about how to do that or any other complex task. It can’t tell the winning candidate to lower taxes, or negotiate a trade treaty with China.
All it can really do is either throw the bums out or keep them in office. And that’s not a defect with the way that elections work in the US It’s inherent in the nature of voting in mass electorates.
Don’t think of all of this as a flaw. It’s just a recognition that voting is only a limited part of how a self-governing republic works. It’s a reminder that anyone who really wants to be in the business of republican governing needs to find ways of getting involved beyond being just a voter, whether it’s through social movements, organised interest groups, political parties, or more than one of these.

—Bloomberg