Not invalidating your viewpoint and I'd bet we are pretty well aligned, I too have a pretty local-first view and that as a country we put too much emphasis, energy, and discussion on national politics and could all benefit from "getting outside". That said, I did want to point out that this comes across as a very self-centric viewpoint, one that would differ greatly depending on who you ask. Even as an anecdotal story, it offers very little to say about the current state of affairs related to how people voted, which would appear to be the intent of the response.

As a bit of a semi-related aside, while everyone has different motivations when voting, as a whole when folks are able to vote for their gov't, one hopes that enough people are thinking about what is good for the majority and society as a whole and not only what is good for themselves. And that has more impact at local and state levels usually. A bit idealistic, admittedly.