It’s true that voting in the primaries gives you more freedom to hopefully get a better candidate later, but you can go further than that. Get into local elections, and do your best to actually figure out what those candidates are about. Over time that will seed the pool of up and coming politicians with people who actually care.

Sure, it’s not likely that your local school board member will be a presidential candidate someday, but a lot of big names started small, and you have the power to help get the good ones up to that stage, and keep the bad ones from reaching it in the first place.