I have friends who are involved in Washington State's exploding cannabis industry. There is a lot of money flowing now, a lot of new jobs being created, an absolutely breathtaking number of new businesses forming and doing trade. Whole new organizations and power structures are forming, because people voted to make this OK.
The same thing's going to happen in Oregon, when our legalization starts rolling along.
Watching an industry move from mostly-black-market (excepting the medical marijuana scene) to exploding with life and all on the level--as one example--it makes it tough for me to accept that voting does not substantially matter.
(The other example I bring up is the Affordable Care Act. I can now buy insurance out of pocket that caps my annual expenses at around $6000. Huge improvement over the old status quo for me and other independent professionals. I'm pretty sure that, had McCain won in 2008, that we wouldn't have anything like McCainCare. Another place where voting has lead to policy that has improved structures of power and trade.)
There are plenty of political scientists who think that, as a mechanism for changing power structures, voting is ineffective and poorly conceived.