I think one of the key things to consider about voting, at least voting in the United States, is that geography matters. If you are in a swing district of a swing state, your potential rewards for voting are going to be substantially different than if you are in a gerrymandered district of a solidly one party state. The gerrymandering of your district might make it much less likely for your vote to influence the district elections, and your state being solidly one party might make it much more difficult for you to influence national presidential elections, since in most states the Presidential winner takes all of the electoral college votes (Although again, this isn’t ALWAYS the case: For Nebraska, you can pick up some electoral college votes and not the whole state.)
Also, if you do attempt to follow state and local elections, it takes substantially more effort: People are going to pick up the highlights of presidential political runs and positions if they follow any national media coverage. By comparison, you may need to spend hours doing web searches to even be able to get a vague idea of which of the 100 or so people running for local offices are the 20 you care about. (And some local offices aren’t even partisan in my states elections, so there isn’t even a single party insignia you can choose, if you wanted to—whereas apparently some areas allow straight ticket selection, so you can just pick D or R and vote for the default candidates of that party across the whole ballot.)
Except, if you are going to be spending a few hours considering the procedure, that’s also a few hours you could theoretically spend doing things other than only voting for a national Candidate. Nothing stops someone from deciding “I don’t care about my local elections, I’m going to spend that research time calling people and telling them to vote for National Candidate X (or alternatively, I don’t care about the national elections, I’m going to go volunteer for local Candidate Y.)”
There are probably other concerns that I haven’t even mentioned. Voting and political offices can get much more complex when you start looking at the details.
I think one of the key things to consider about voting, at least voting in the United States, is that geography matters. If you are in a swing district of a swing state, your potential rewards for voting are going to be substantially different than if you are in a gerrymandered district of a solidly one party state. The gerrymandering of your district might make it much less likely for your vote to influence the district elections, and your state being solidly one party might make it much more difficult for you to influence national presidential elections, since in most states the Presidential winner takes all of the electoral college votes (Although again, this isn’t ALWAYS the case: For Nebraska, you can pick up some electoral college votes and not the whole state.)
Also, if you do attempt to follow state and local elections, it takes substantially more effort: People are going to pick up the highlights of presidential political runs and positions if they follow any national media coverage. By comparison, you may need to spend hours doing web searches to even be able to get a vague idea of which of the 100 or so people running for local offices are the 20 you care about. (And some local offices aren’t even partisan in my states elections, so there isn’t even a single party insignia you can choose, if you wanted to—whereas apparently some areas allow straight ticket selection, so you can just pick D or R and vote for the default candidates of that party across the whole ballot.)
Except, if you are going to be spending a few hours considering the procedure, that’s also a few hours you could theoretically spend doing things other than only voting for a national Candidate. Nothing stops someone from deciding “I don’t care about my local elections, I’m going to spend that research time calling people and telling them to vote for National Candidate X (or alternatively, I don’t care about the national elections, I’m going to go volunteer for local Candidate Y.)”
There are probably other concerns that I haven’t even mentioned. Voting and political offices can get much more complex when you start looking at the details.