I vote as a protest, not because I amount it to expect to anything. But although the elites will ignore any election result that doesn't suit them, they do take the wishes of the electorate into account in a broad sense, i.e. they don't want to piss the public off by making them aware that "democracy" is a sham. So voting still "matters" in that general sense, just not in the sense that you're going to get what you vote for in the long run (unless you're a brainwashed leftist)