Unfortunately, that’s the only kind of voting there is, so long as there are factions and negotiations (ie always, realistically speaking).

People think of voting at the polls like an opinion poll, but it’s not, or shouldn’t be treated as such. We are the equivalent of electors in a college or legislators in a parliament. What we wield is not our opinion, it is our political power, what little sliver of it we have in the great mass of the electorate. If Senator John Q. RealtivelyLeft abstained on a bill for universal healthcare tomorrow because the wording displeased him, we wouldn’t say “Well, that’s just his opinion”, we’d lambast him for forsaking a chance to make this fucking country a little less miserable for his own petty partiality. Same with voting.

Look to your left and to your right. Your fellow voters are there, and it’s only by majority vote that anything gets passed.

Be strategic. And also, be loud and unafraid of your own position; it’s the only way the calculus on strategies changes.

First pass the post suuuuucks. Literally anything else is at least slightly better.