Tuesday will mark the 50^th anniversary of my first vote. Since 1972, I’ve voted in 12 presidential elections and 11 previous midterms, and on a lot of other occasions.

Like many other voters, I’m considering what my vote might mean, and the answers are far from reassuring.

At the risk of an old-timerism, I need to confirm what younger voters often ask: Yes, elections are worse than they used to be, or at least they accomplish less in steering the course of the nation and each state.

American elections since 1800, when political parties formed, have always been hotly contested, and “mudslinging” relatively common, but one knew, by Election Day, a lot about what each candidate, and the parties behind them, stood for.

Now, aside from the eternal verity that Republicans are always for cutting taxes, Democrats generally not, it’s hard to tell. What pass for “issues” in the 24-hour news cycle seem more intended to elicit reactions — negative ones — than what anyone might accomplish after the election, when the real work used to begin.

This year, the Supreme Court is on the ballot — not a place the world’s most powerful court ought to be, but the justices brought this on themselves.

It didn’t start with the Dobbs decision. If you want to identify the point at which elections became measurably worse, you’d start with the court’s infamous ruling in Citizen’s United v. Federal Election Commission.

It was just a few days before President Barack Obama’s second State of the Union address, where he called out the court on yet another 5-4 decision utterly changing our constitutional system. Justice Samuel Alito, later author of Dobbs, could be seen mouthing “not true,” but Obama was right.

Five justices decided to destroy what was left of our campaign finance system — especially the McCain-Feingold Act, which favored small donations and limited big ones, in favor of one rewarding wealth.

They did this on the false premise that money equals “speech” — false, because in a democratic system, it provides infinitely more “speech” for those who can buy ads and finance campaigns than the average citizen.

We see the results. Not only have amounts spent on campaigns exploded, by 10 or even 20 times, but the vast proportion of the new spending comes from “dark money” groups unaccountable to the public, even concealing donors’ identities.

It isn’t that the new “system” creates an advantage for one party; after an initial boost for Republicans in the crucial 2010 midterms, Democrats learned how to raise excessive amounts, too.

It’s that nearly all the spending goes toward attacking the opposition — trying to convince us of horrendous things that will happen if the other side wins. The whole notion of party platforms and comparing candidates on issues has virtually disappeared.

Combined with the infections spread by “social media,” it’s a toxic stew that doesn’t seem to deter voting, but makes it much harder to decide.

It might matter less if we hadn’t already had the 2020 election. Now, at the bidding of the defeated candidate denying his loss, hundreds of candidates won’t pledge to accept the results unless they win.

A democratic system cannot survive this thinking, if sustained. There are too many examples of elected leaders who, once elected, refuse to surrender power.

In the United States, the first president who lost reelection was John Adams, defeated by Thomas Jefferson in 1800. Adams was ungracious, leaving Washington before Jefferson arrived; his successors created the tradition of attending the next Inauguration — another tradition suddenly ended in 2020.

In our time, elected leaders in Venezuela, Hungary, Turkey and of course, Russia, have won once and then refused to leave, with frightening consequences for the entire world, not just for Ukraine. China may well be next.

Could it happen here? Of course it could. The only way to prevent it is to consider our votes more seriously than the polls, media, and many candidates think we will.

A few months back, the sentiment that this might be the most important election of our lives was heard often; it hasn’t been audible lately.

Yet that thought, too, should guide us. All our other concerns may be thwarted if we can’t get this one big thing right.

It can come out well. After years of estrangement, Adams and Jefferson began writing to each other, a correspondence that in exploring the dimensions of their brand-new country ranks with the Federalist papers, which helped create the Constitution.

Jefferson and Adams left this world as friends — a mildly comforting thought as we confront what happens after Nov. 8.

Douglas Rooks, a Maine editor, commentator and reporter since 1984, is the author of three books, and is now researching the life and career of a U.S. Chief Justice. He welcomes comment at: drooks@tds.net