I’ve been in the get-out-the-vote space for 25 years, now. I’ve been politically active against gerrymandering nearly as long. My wife was tooth-and-nails in the redistricting fight (in Texas; Texas!) for ~10 years.

Here’s my hands-on experience: at least half the people you meet are defective, to a scary extent, functionally in terms of empathy. Probably two thirds have serious executive functioning deficits. That means they can neither understand the plight of their fellows; and, even if they could, they could not generalize their own situation into a policy to help everyone in the same situation.

EDIT: most people don’t vote. A disproportionate number that do are both empathetic, and high have high levels of executive functioning skills. The flip side of the coin are activated people who are missing one-or-the-other skills, but are voting out of some other errant ideology. I want to be clear that the distribution of voters is “both sides”: there are disgusting and enlightened voters on both sides of the spectrum. We’re all trapped in the box, together.