As I argued elsewhere, a fork is a good example of an illusory choice. A rook/queen fork is not a real choice between keeping your rook or your queen, it is a forcing move designed to take your rook.
A choice between staying in an abusive relationship and killing yourself does not meet the criteria for an uncoerced choice, especially when it is being offered by the people with whom you are in an abusive relationship. Not killing yourself doesn't imply you consent to being in an abusive relationship. You'd have to be trying really hard to consider that a choice except in the most literal unhelpful sense.
Even our legal system (mostly) understands that you can't have a valid contract without consideration on both sides.
I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree about whether the world would be substantively different today if the 2016 election had had a different outcome.
No, I'm pretty sure we agree about that. This is what we disagree about:
"in practice it is merely an illusion of choice"
I think it's a real choice, not an illusion, and that therefore votes matter. You may not be happy with any of the options, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a real choice, votes matter, and the outcomes of elections really can and do change the course of history, for better or for worse.
As an aside, if you are not happy with the choices, you can do something about that too, but effecting that kind of change does require more work than merely voting.
We don't need to agree on the definition of choice, but as long as political machines are allowed to keep playing these games, we're going to keep voting into an effectively captured playing field, and our decline as a society will continue.
The difference between slow decline and quick decline is important, but we still lose.
A choice between staying in an abusive relationship and killing yourself does not meet the criteria for an uncoerced choice, especially when it is being offered by the people with whom you are in an abusive relationship. Not killing yourself doesn't imply you consent to being in an abusive relationship. You'd have to be trying really hard to consider that a choice except in the most literal unhelpful sense.
Even our legal system (mostly) understands that you can't have a valid contract without consideration on both sides.