18goingon80:

1. What we know as Democracy is nothing more than a fleeting moment of illusory power.
2. The political system exists as an integral State apparatus. Its primary concern is self-preservation.
3. Irrespective of a party’s alleged progressiveness or the faithful promises of politicians, the most “radical” of governments will only ever be able to implement the most tenuous of reforms. 
4. While governments may implement piecemeal policy changes for the better - such as the reformation of Australia’s immigration policy or the improvement of Medicare - these ameliorations will never challenge capitalism, the state or our hierarchical society. 
5. By participating in the electoral system you validate government. Will an isolated and exclusive body of politicians - governed by elite powers - ever be capable of making the correct decisions for you, your family or your community? Can anyone accurately represent your interests? In fact, do you really want representatives to make and implement decisions for you? Surely we can resolve dilemmas, discover solutions and determine our own lives without recourse to alienating mediation, that is, indirect action and representation.
6. Voting is incredibly disempowering as it abdicates control over our own lives by forwarding that control to someone else.
7. Political abstention does not entail apathy. 
8. We are individuals who, knowingly or not, lust for authentic life. Renouncing control within the political and economic spheres of society results in losing control of our personal life.
9.  We can construct an alternative to the state, capitalism and faux democracies.

I’ll start voting when I see the hammer & sickle on campaign literature.  Screw the two-party system.  None of this shit works.  We stay poor, the aristocracy using us as human fuel for their hot air balloon.  The competing forces in this world are not good vs. evil, Democrat vs. Republican, conservative vs. liberal…

The battle is between two fat & ravenous beasts over an old bone.  A fight for the scraps of our dreams.