As a citizen, we all have a civic duty to vote. An obligation that undergirds the responsibility we all carry as functioning members of society. And quite frankly, I think it’s all bunk!

Sure, participation in the electoral process signals that the system we have in place functions, at least on the surface, as it was designed to. However, when you peel just one or two layers back, you can quite clearly see that the internal political process has not been conducted in good faith for quite some time.

When I was a kid, the big conspiracy was always that the electoral college could steal an election from the people, and that if those electors didn’t approve of the people’s vote, they had the power to go their own way. Well, as an adult, I think it is much worse than that.

The best and brightest minds live here in the United States, in my opinion, and because of that, we have led the world in certain areas of business and innovation for decades. We have profited tremendously from it, and we have driven the world forward. The problem is, when it comes to political office, many of the best and brightest are often barred from participation because of the wealth barrier to entry.

The political game is no longer about who has the best ideas, no longer about who is the strongest leader, not even about who has the most charisma. No, today it is all about who has the most money. The triple-digit millionaires and billionaires in the country have taken over our political system. They are not the smartest among us, nor the most qualified, but they are the ones who can afford to play the game. The entire system is rigged to keep out anyone who has not proven that the only thing that matters at the end of the day is money.

Business runs politics, and business does not care about the people’s well-being, only the people’s spending power. Only the people’s willingness to buy and consume. Conversely, our political system operates on a daily carousel of lies and empty words about issues that most people truly don’t care one way or the other about.

I’ve been alive for 37 years, long enough to see the political process run its course several times over. I’ve learned that public infrastructure will always be broken. Public schools will always be broken, the healthcare system will always be broken, the insurance system will always be broken, and the participating politicians are comfortable with all of these things as long as they can profit from the system while simultaneously convincing YOU that they are hard at work to produce solutions to these problems. Meanwhile, they flood social media and news channels with distractions such as foreign affairs, divisive social justice issues, personal scandals, and race-related conflicts. Things that are certain to stir your emotions while providing an escape route leading away from having to actually be held accountable for their failure to produce any tangible results that might actually approve the lives of the people whose votes write them the golden ticket.

That is the reason I do not vote. I will not willingly participate in a system that, as far as I can tell, ensures that the man or woman elected will be afforded a great and prosperous life for as long as they live, while they continue to allow those same voters to languish and suffer under the same leadership they campaign to be a part of. Their net worth will surely skyrocket as they manipulate markets and use insider information to become extremely well-informed on future dealings before the rest of us. They take advantage of comprehensive healthcare at the expense of the taxpayer while telling those same taxpayers that that system could not work. They do not represent the wants and the needs of the people, and I will not cast my vote until they begin to do so.