People often refuse to discuss politics. People often refuse to participate in politics. People often refuse to participate in elections.
Those 3 sentences are based on engagement with people in the world around me and the actual results that are given upon conclusion of elections.
People commonly say all politicians lie, or that politicians are all the same. People also commonly say that their vote does not count. People commonly believe that they are not informed or do not know who to vote for.
I tell people this often. The bare minimum you can do in participating in the election is vote. The next step is to find out who the current people in the positions are (incumbents) and make a decision. Do you like how things are, vote them back in, if you do not like how things are vote them out. That is the bare minimum. Takes a whole 10 minutes, 15 max on some of the local stuff. Now can you vote out someone doing good / right, yes indeed. But that is the chance that you take by not looking deeper into any position.
People are content with giving their power away and then feeling that they have no power at all. The bare minimum anyone can do is vote for random people on the ballot. You can vote for the wrong candidate but not voting often leads to what people say are bad people anyway.
Another problem that we have is that people do not want to run for political office. Because it is not about doing what is right, it is about slinging mud at people and a popularity contest. There use to be a saying about voting in the best person or the policies. But when you look at the advertisements on the tv, websites, text messages or phone calls it is all slinging mud about how wrong the other person is for the position and never how how right someone is. Elections are not about the people or better put the policies, it never was, we just fooled ourselves into believing it was.
People would rather vote for someone in a $5,000 suit than someone in jeans and a t-shirt that lives next to them. And do not be a woman. Just look at our elected officials and you run across a common theme: Old White Men (predominantly christian) are the default. People talk themselves out of voting for anyone else, even when the policies are the exact same between 2 candidates. Let that sink in. People have built in bias that they are blind to see what they do. That is something else people complain about. The age of elected officials YET when young people run they get hardly any support much less votes.
When John Cornyn lost his senate primary in May 2026, mind you that he was a senior senator, he simply stated: “Those that show up decide for those who do not.” That was a simple statement that spoke so much louder than people realized or care to understand. This statement was made after 8% of the voters turned out in the primary election runoff to decide who would move on to the general election. 92% of the people did not participate because they felt empowered enough to let others decide for them. And that is the crux of the problem that we have with our elected officials.