From the perspective of who wins, voting does seem pretty pointless if you disagree with all candidates who have a chance. People will often claim that to vote for a candidate who can't win is to throw away your vote. I disagree. Voting for any person that you don't want to see in office is throwing away your vote because no matter what happens, you'll be unhappy with the outcome. Not voting at all will mean politicians assume a mandate to do as they think best. They'll assume most people are content with the status-quo.

Elections are a platform for national debate and the candidate you support is your spokesperson. The winners do claim a mandate, but that mandate won't be so strong if 25% of the population votes for the candidate who runs on an anti-surveillance platform.

If your "throwaway" candidate is a good speaker and can convey their ideals effectively, supporting them is an opportunity to spread your message to people who haven't heard it in a way that they will connect with (if they've heard at all). Voting is good, but supporting the campaign financially or through volunteer work is even better. It also demonstrates to those who share your point of view that, although they may be in the minority, they aren't alone. I try not to focus on who wins the next election, instead focusing on the long term goal of sharing ideals thereby shifting public opinion.

It's most frustrating when there isn't even a decent third party candidate. I suppose at that point all you can do is run yourself or find someone more qualified and encourage them to run.

You guys refer to "voting" based on an implicit definition which I don't think you can support empirically. Do you mean "interacting with the machine in such a way that text indicating your choice shows up on the screen"? Or do you mean "actually influencing the outcome to the extent of 1/x where x is the number of voters in the election"?

In other words, you go thru the motions at the polling place, then some official announces some numbers as the result. What assurance do you have that the numbers announced have any definite relation to what people did in the voting booths?

If you can't show, or the government officials can't prove that deterministic relation to the public, then the talk about how voting affects political outcomes is fallacious. The last vestige of democracy was abolished when computers replaced paper ballots in an electorally significant fraction of districts.

There is a last reason to vote: use it or lose it.

I believe we're at or approaching the point where governments and politicians merely pay us lip service. This is certainly the case in surveillance.

It would be much more efficient, for them, to not have to bother with elections.

If enough people stop voting, it would be tempting for them to try to get rid of voting.

Would you rather live in your country that has voting, however badly it's degenerated, or your country without voting, governed by people who have eliminated voting because they could?

At least make them jump through this one last hoop. Maintain the vote, and it could be better one day. Without the vote, I think it would be the end.