Your vote matters only on the say it is cast. Past that, it means nothing.
For very 25,000 letters sent, 250,000 emails sent, and 1,000,000 phone calls made, there is a lobbyist giving your representative a check for $25,000 or $250,0000 to ignore you.
That’s why I think strengthening the culture and character of your own neighborhood is far more important than worrying about whether the red puppet or the blue puppet sits on the velvet cushion in DC. Votes can be manipulated or ignored - wholesale cultural resistance to government initiatives (like the way young people are ignoring ObamaCare) is a lot harder for lobbyists and banksters and Communists to overcome.