comment: >
  
  I personally disagree with it too, but that is the mainstream argument applied to any voter 'wasting' their vote on a third party candidate. In either case, most Western countries have shifted to proportional representation of some form to greatly expand the representation of each voter.
context: I reject your premise. Define "does nothing."
  Do you mean that if you're in the minority your vote doesn't change the outcome? True. That's also true if you're in the majority. So would you say that if you're in the majority your vote does nothing?
  That would mean no matter who you vote for, your vote does nothing. But that's just a fancy way of saying "You don't single-handedly choose the representative."
  Yeah, that's how voting works. No one person's vote changes the outcome.
  It still matters.
  It matters because the legitimacy of the government is derived from the democratic participation of its citizens. Your vote matters because representatives are chosen by the people, not by one marginal voter, but by the people collectively. They all matter. >
  
  If that were true, why has our government faced no crisis of legitimacy after decades of poor electoral turnout? In reality, whether or not people invest in the system has zero bearing on the government claims to legitimacy.
  If participation did have bearing on legitimacy, proportional representation would reflect that. It’s de-legitimizing that one national party can win millions fewer votes and represent only a third of voters, yet hold a majority in congress. >
  
  If you don't like that, yer gonna hate parliamentary coalition building >
  
  Different problems, but at least they generally avoid such radically disproportionate representation >
  
  You lose the idea of representing a district. 
  I’d rather we move to ranked choice voting. >
  
  Ranked choice voting is helpful, but I personally feel it doesn't go far enough to combat gerrymandering. Mixed member proportional representation is a proportional system that maintains representatives representing a district, while adding the benefits of ensuring every vote contributes to electing an official that aligns with the vote. 
  Would this be sufficient? >
  
  I’m a bit more incremental in my approach to things. Let’s start with change that can actually happen. >
  
  I'm a big fan of proportional representation but perhaps an even bigger fan of MMP:
  Two Ticks 
  Edit: MMP preserves local representation (even though it think local representation'benefits are enormously overstated by the 3 peoples who write to you their representative) >
  
  RCV+an uncapped house would be sufficient for me. I don’t hate the idea but I like having a specific rep whose name I know.  PSA at large elections have been stuck down as discriminatory based on VRA >
  
  You can have both district representation and proportional representation, see MMPR (used in Germany and New Zealand).
  In practice, it leads to the same kind of political dynamics as party-list proportional representation. Most people don't actually care about who is "their" representative and they just vote for a party. >
  
  
  Your vote does nothing if you're in the minority of a voting district
  
  I disagree with the premise of your post.  You're saying that your vote does nothing unless you vote for the winning candidate?  That's nonsense.  Your vote matters, you just lost.  Approximately half the voters in every election vote for the loser, and that goes for everything from student council to President.  
  Voting matters even if you don't win.