Voting a very basic, easy, simple aspect of a participatory government
There’s certainly other ways than voting that can be done.
But it’s like money: money is fiction, but it’s easier than bartering. We can participate in government without having a voting system in place or having a fractured one that’s broken and distorted that only allowed a select special people to vote – which is kind of how I view a representative government (but as a pragmatic necessity too) – but voting is simple and numeric, reasonable and equitable because theoretically 1=1.
Of course 1 doesn’t = 1 in the USA already for voting; the system’s weird. But I certainly wouldn’t want to go in the direction of worsening it