When reading the Federalist Papers and the foundational materials of the country, it is clear that the US Founders did not ascribe the same magical powers to the vote that politicians do today.
It appears to me that the primary aim of the Constitution was to limit the size and scope of government.
Voting in the US was not meant as a means of legitimatizing government excess but was intended to be a means of checking such excess.
The Founders clearly failed to see the rise of the two party system. The great corruption of the day lies in the way that we choose our partisan candidates.
IMHO people should vote, but they should point out the skewed nature of the partisan system as they do so.
If people stubbornly continue to limit their voting options to one of the two major parties, nothing will change. However, in the age of the internet, there exists the possibility for a non-establishment or even anti-establishment candidate to bypass the political gatekeepers and ruin the two-party oligarchy. There hasn't yet been an "internet candidate," but anyone famous enough to be considered a social media influencer could easily fill that role.
Trump, while still a product of the old system, was at least a step in the right direction - he was not part of their plan. I don't see him as fundamentally different from any career politician, but he certainly fills the role of "human hand grenade," as Michael Moore called him, quite well.
The internet is still young, but it never forgets. Most US voters are still getting all their information from legacy media, but as the establishment continues to screech in agony instead of learning their lesson, it will inevitably die along with all the shrivelled-up career politicians and bureaucrats who are currently keeping it running.
I could go on, but then this would turn into a rant.
I've voted for third parties for most of my life.
Unfortunately, it is not just the stubbornness of the electorate. The parties have contrived extra Constitutional structures to secure their dominance.
BTW, I wish that pundits would spend more time pointing out that neither Clinton nor Trump got the majority of the vote in 2016.
I know, it's an absolutely byzantine system. To point out every single problem with it, we'd both end up writing pages on the subject. Luckily, I think it's collapsing under its own weight. Remember, an animal is most dangerous when wounded, hence the recent increase of p00-flinging, both figuratively and very literally.
Personally, I prefer to sit back and laugh, since political theatre is the greatest farce ever conceived.
The Constitution has proven wholly inadequate as a framework to restrain the ambitions and avarice of the political class, and partisanship built on false choice fallacies is not a surprise. While I would like to see Jo Jorgensen make waves and disrupt the duopoly, I don't think her election to the presidency can really defeat the deep state of bureaucracy and perverse incentives. It is far more likely hat she will be corrupted than that she will manage to start draining the swamp.
The Constitution is simply the articles of incorporation for the Federal Government. That, in and of itself, is not enough to assure liberty.
What really matters is the rational system behind the Constitution. Partisans have rejected the rational style of the founders. So, even with a decent Constitution, we are on a negative path.
BTW, the same thing applies to the Bible. Even though the Bible is a good book, people with a corrupt system of reasoning can turn the work inside out.
I'm not so sure about your premise. The people who created the Constitution did so under dubious authority. Their job was to amend the Articles of Confederation.
My premise is that the US Founders received a classical liberal education founded on Aristotelian logic (as presented by the likes of Antoine Arnauld and Isaac Watts). They had a conciliatory approach to rhetoric influenced by Cicero and the likes.
It was because the founding generation had received a classical liberal education that they were able to create a functioning government.
Modern Progressivism and Modern Conservatism were created by European states. These modern ideologies were founded on an oppositional mode of thinking that some call Hegelian Dialectics or Modern Logic.
The Constitution was simply the articles of incorporation for the Federal Government. It is not the outline for a society.
What really matters is the mode of thought behind the society. A society with a solid basis in rational thought can thrive even if it has an imperfect constitution.
A society that has adopted an oppositional mode of thought will fall apart even if the society had a perfect constitution.