Having been involved with local governments and served on city council committees, my experience has been that they literally only care about things that are legible to them. If I have an idea about parking or a preference for landscaping, they are pretty responsive. If I want them to remove flock cameras they tell me I am a crank. And all the canidated running feel the same way.

But honesty, national politics are very local for me.

Because you can answer this question, maybe:

in what way did my vote in rural Colorado effect -any- election at -any- level in a way that I could have avoided this situation where I go to weekly protests against ICE?

Cause, hoss, I hate this shit. There is literally -nothing- more that I would love to believe than I could just, like, vote for a better local school board.

I am almost 50 and I am in the streets with kids because I know for a fact that mass deportations which started under Obama are the root of what we are seeing.

Or how about this:

literally what voting action have I have taken that makes me responsible for the two children who were kidnapped from my community by ICE, for whose sake I got pepper sprayed by DHS Federal Police and ICE, and who we were unable to prevent from being stolen.

Because while I feel culpable for not following up on all actions that I had at hand, I don't think that it was voting that led the feds to assault me and 20 of my comrades.

So you're smart- tell me how my vote caused that in a way that I can "do better next time".