Elections matter, but history shows they are not enough. Real democracy is built through organized civic power between elections.
Voting matters. That needs to be said plainly—especially now. But let’s be frank: voting does not provide an immediate mechanism for holding politicians accountable when their actions violate the public trust, undermine democratic norms, or serve concentrated wealth over the needs of the many. Ballots select officeholders; they do not restrain them. Without organized civic pressure between elections, power drifts upward, accountability disappears, and governance becomes something done to the public rather than by it.
Case in Point…
The Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page landmark study that challenges what we’ve been led to believe about elections.
Unfamiliar with the Gilens-Page Study?
In a landmark 2014 study, political scientists Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University analyzed nearly 2,000 U.S. policy decisions and found that when the preferences of average Americans conflict with those of economic elites or organized business interests, the views of ordinary citizens have virtually no independent effect on policy outcomes. Put plainly, average voters have a snowball’s chance in hell of seeing their policy preferences enacted—unless those preferences happen to align with powerful interests.
That finding should not surprise anyone paying attention—but it does require us to rethink what voting can and cannot do.
Voting is necessary. It is how we choose who occupies formal power. It determines who writes budgets, appoints judges, oversees agencies, and sets the rules of the game. Not voting cedes those decisions entirely to others—and historically, that surrender has fallen hardest on marginalized communities.
But the Gilens–Martin finding clarifies a harder truth: voting by itself doesn’t mean influence.
If elite preferences dominate policy outcomes, then ballots alone cannot counterbalance concentrated wealth, corporate lobbying, regulatory capture, or judicial insulation. Voting decides who sits in the chair—not who pulls the levers.
That does not make voting meaningless. It makes it insufficient.
Voting is the point of entry, not the point of power. It is the floor of democratic participation, not the ceiling. Without sustained civic engagement between elections—organization, pressure, oversight, and institution-building—the act of voting becomes permission without leverage.
What the Gilens–Martin study ultimately tells us is not that democracy is pointless, but that democracy must be practiced more fully than most of us have been led to believe.
If voting is the entry point, then what follows must be a disciplined progression from awareness to participation, from participation to organization, and from organization to power. Voting is not the work but it can be where the real work begins.
The Civic Ladder: From Awareness to Power
The following 101 actions are not a random list. They form a ladder of engagement. Each rung builds capacity, confidence, and collective leverage. You don’t have to do everything—but you do have to do a few if you want to move beyond what Gilens and Page discovered, oligarchy.
Level 1: Observer
Learning, awareness, orientation
This is where most Americans stop—and where democracy begins to fail if they never move further.
Examples include:
- Watching political shows and podcasts
- Reading news, Ballotpedia, Judgepedia, Policypedia
- Watching historical documentaries
- Researching issues
- Knowing your representatives, districts, and judges
- Learning how city and state governments function
- Knowing your rights
What this level gives you:
Information without agency.
Why it’s insufficient:
You can recognize injustice perfectly and still be politically irrelevant.
Level 2: Participant
Engagement, expression, presence
This is where civic life becomes visible—but still largely reactive.
Examples include:
- Voting and registering others to vote
- Attending city council meetings, town halls, rallies
- Calling or emailing elected officials
- Signing petitions and joining boycotts
- Writing letters to the editor or blog posts
- Sharing articles and actions on social media
- Donating to campaigns or causes
- Volunteering with nonprofits or campaigns
What this level gives you:
Voice, visibility, and occasional influence.
Why it’s insufficient:
Participation without organization is easily ignored.
Level 3: Organizer
Coordination, leadership, structure
This is where individual concern turns into collective force.
Examples include:
- Hosting house parties or political events
- Organizing events, teach-ins, or forums
- Walking precincts
- Starting petitions or
- Starting a worker owned and operated cooperative
- Joining or forming tenant unions, co-ops, mutual aid networks
- Volunteering in leadership roles
- Registering voters strategically
- Building issue-based coalitions
- Creating civic education materials for your community
What this level gives you:
Durable pressure and agenda-setting power.
Why it still may not be enough:
Without institutional footholds, gains can be reversed.
Level 4: Power-Builder
Decision-making authority, system change
This is where democracy becomes real.
Examples include:
- Running for office
- Serving on boards and commissions
- Becoming a poll worker or election judge
- Participating in participatory budgeting
- Filing public records requests ( FOIA )
- Tracking and publicizing voting records
- Organizing labor, workplace democracy, or strikes
- Supporting civil rights litigation
- Building or supporting independent media outlets
- Developing long-term movement infrastructure
- Engaging in nonviolent direct action or civil disobedience when warranted
What this level gives you:
The ability to shape outcomes, not just react to them.
The Point Many of Us Miss
Voting does not build democracy. Many authoritarian states hold elections—often regularly, often loudly, and often with high turnout. Elections alone do not confer democratic legitimacy; they can just as easily function as instruments of control, normalization, and consent-manufacturing within fundamentally undemocratic systems.
History makes this clear. Russia holds national elections, but political opposition is tightly managed, media is state-dominated, and outcomes are effectively predetermined. Iran conducts elections, yet ultimate authority rests with unelected clerical bodies that veto candidates and override popular will. Egypt stages elections under conditions where opposition parties are suppressed and dissent is criminalized. China maintains electoral processes at local levels, but power remains centralized in a single-party state with no meaningful mechanism for popular accountability.
The lesson is unavoidable: elections are a procedure, not a guarantee. Without organized civic power, institutional contestation, and continuous public oversight, voting can coexist comfortably with authoritarian rule.
What has always been missing in the United States is not participation at the ballot box, but the sustained civic capacity required to make government accountable to the people. Authoritarian governance does not suddenly appear when people disengage; it fills the vacuum left when civic life is thin, episodic, individualized, and unorganized. A functioning democracy—one this country has long gestured toward but not yet achieved—requires trained citizens, organized communities, and institutions that are actively contested rather than passively deferred to.
Final Word
Authoritarians don’t fear ballots; they fear organized people.
And that matters, because many of the people reading LA Progressive are already doing the work. You are activists. You serve on commissions. You organize unions. You staff polling places. Some of you hold elected office. Others build power in less visible—but no less essential—ways that push this country toward democracy, no matter how aggressively oligarchic interests try to block organizing, fragment movements, or drain civic life of meaning.
Sharon Kyle JD is a former president of the Guild Law School and is the publisher and co-founder of the LA Progressive. For years before immersing herself in the law and social justice, Ms. Kyle was a member of several space flight teams at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory where she managed resources for projects like Magellan, Genesis, and Mars Pathfinder. Sharon also sits on several boards including the Board of Directors of the ACLU and is on the editorial board of the BlackCommentator.com.