The US style of winner-take-all representative democracy creates a huge collective action problem. My ballot choices boil down to "mediocre to useless", "complete wingnut", and a few somewhat preferable third party candidates I don't dare vote for because dividing the mediocre vote guarantees the wingnut wins. A third party can't succeed unless they somehow manage to attract today's left and right wing voters in equal and large numbers. In the meantime, my views are being safely ignored—they just never seem to be on the radar of my only feasible choice from the ballot.

I would much prefer direct democracy within a sharply limited scope of government powers. A laboratory of the states, with a couple dozen hellholes and a few places I'd be eager to live. But I don't see a path from here to there.