“If voting did anything they would outlaw it.” Is such an insane take to me, because literally all of human politics for recorded history has centered around Outlawing the Vote.
You know what? I've had a rough day, so I'm gonna wind down by getting on my soapbox about why I believe all of human politics for recorded history has been centered around Outlawing the Vote.
The vote is innate to any just system. If a person is affected by a law, the person must be able to affect the law, and the vote is the most basic expression of this innate truth. Wipe away all culture, all history, all context, place three humans with amnesia in a white box with no memories, and you will still have the vote. Because humans are innately equal, their political power should be equal as well.
Unfortunately, this obvious truth is often obfuscated by bias and illusions. The fact that we can hear our own thoughts but no one else's creates the illusion that we are the only interior human and all others are exteriors, and the fact that we have an innate in-group favoritism is often mistaken for genuine moral superiority to the out-group. Thus is the hierarchical mindset born, and the suppression of the vote begun: I should have more political power than you, so you shouldn't have a vote.
The first major form of vote suppression was to make the vote so illegal it is nearly invisible. Only a small number of people (nobility) will have political power, and even among them, direct voting will be as minimal as possible. Power will be traded off via lineage and the only "voting" will be which of each lineage will be chosen. A group of nobles technically "votes" to decide whether to nominate the king's nephew or his uncle. The process is sometimes formalized, but most often kept confusing and ambiguous to avoid the vote. Because all parties are using either implied or actual force to "vote", votes are inherently unequal and hierarchy is maintained.
The second major form of outlawing the vote is limited suffrage. A small portion of worthy people shall vote. These people are inherently more worthy, because they are better educated, rich, male, of the correct race, of the correct bloodline. If you cannot legally limit suffrage, use various loopholes: poll taxes, literacy tests, prison reform, age requirements, special IDs. While a small group may have equality through the vote, hierarchy is upheld, and people remain bound by a law they cannot affect.
The third major form of outlawing the vote is rigging the vote. If one cannot stop the people from voting, one must find a way to minimize their impact. Gerrymandering is the most obvious form, but there are many ways to encourage certain groups to turn out while discouraging other groups in order to sway outcomes in your favor. All subject to law can vote, but votes are unequal in effect.
Millennia of effort has been put into finding ways to stop, obfuscate, minimize, exclude, rig, and interfere with the vote. If they're not done trying to stop it, we're not done fighting for it.