Even if your state elects the smartest senator there has ever been, he still becomes part of the massive lumbering machine. And the machine is only as smart as it's dumbest person. The US Government has so much baggage now that it's nigh impossible to make anything but superficial changes.

What if the election mechanism has been (psychologically) engineered in a way to make real change as difficult as possible and where the only possible changes are pre-scripted like a video game to the benefit of whoever is at the top at the moment?

Your "intelligent" vote is worthless if only a small, insignificant number of people are intellectually able to vote intelligently. The hurdles for making change should be low enough to be not only theoretically, but also practically possible.

An uninformed electorate isn't helping, but I don't see how voting is going to fix this.

I'm starting to believe that the smart people just don't want to be politicians. It's a good way to become rich and famous, though.

To get elected you usually need a lot of money and to get the money you usually need to cooperate with people with bad intentions.

I thought I did, and now I'm not so sure.