We understand — believe us, we understand — our fellow Americans who may be turned off by politics right now.

At the national level, none of our picks for president seem worthwhile and Congress seems ineffectual and divisive.

We understand — believe us, we understand — those who may want to throw up their hands in disgust and just walk away from the whole thing, stay home in November and avoid the polls all together.

We urge you to reconsider.

Even if you don’t vote in national elections or even state elections, every ballot will also contain a number of local contests and ballot proposals. Those ballot questions matter as much — in some ways, more — than the choice of who to send to the White House.

While presidential and congressional politics deal with important, sometimes life-or-death matters such as national security, tariffs (which can affect your job), and abortion access, local politics deal with your back yard, quite literally. Local politics set the policies that determine what you can do in your yard, how much you pay in taxes on your yard, whether the street that passes by your yard gets plowed and how often a squad car passes by.

We’d urge every voter to stay engaged at the national level. Governments can run ramrod over their people when the people don’t pay attention.

But, at the very least, we urge every voter to show up to the polls for the local questions.

Many of those local contests will begin to be decided not in November but in the Aug. 6 primary, for which absentee balloting already is underway. So show up this summer, too, not just in November.

Democracy, to truly represent the will of the majority, needs a majority to participate.

Democracy needs you.