Actually, conspiratorial views of the state and elections do play a very similar role - albeit with different constituencies. There are ritualistic methods of empowerment for those who have little or no control of the political process.
For most ordinary folks, elections are a participatory ritual, lik egoing to church every Sunday - by so doing people do something that "connects" them to a higher power of t euniverse and thus gives them an illusion of controlling their destiny.
Fot those souls who are more screwed by the system, marginalised and lack education - standard participatory rituals, like lections or writing letters to the so-called elected representatives do not do the trick. The conspiratorial view, otoh, does - it creates an illusion that by exposing elite secret dealings and wheelings, the holder of a conspiratorial view thwarts their evil plans, or at least is in the possessions of information that the elites did not want him to have, and that puts him perhaps not in control of things but at least a bit a head in the game. (That aspect was nicely shown in an otherwise unremarkable comedy _My cousin Vinny_ when the main character, a freshly baked semi-educated lawyer, schmoozes with the prosecutor who as a result promises him to send a copy of the prosecution files on the case; the lawyer later brags how his little conspiratorial trick put him ahead of the game, only to learn that it did got him nothing special, since he was entitled to receiving such documents by law).
In sum, both the elecoral system and conspiratorial theories are form of ritualistic behavior that gives people an illusion that they control (at least symbolically) a reality over which they have no control.
wojtek
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