I also don't know a lot about this topic, but if you are serious about it, Lenin wrote on Electoralism in “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder, chapter Should We Participate in Bourgeois Parliaments?. (source)
tldr: Communists should participate in elections since that's where the people are.
This paragraph specifically is pretty enlightening
Even if only a fairly large minority of the industrial workers, and not “millions” and “legions”, follow the lead of the Catholic clergy—and a similar minority of rural workers follow the landowners and kulaks (Grossbauern)—it undoubtedly signifies that parliamentarianism in Germany has not yet politically outlived itself, that participation in parliamentary elections and in the struggle on the parliamentary rostrum is obligatory on the party of the revolutionary proletariat specifically for the purpose of educating the backward strata of its own class, and for the purpose of awakening and enlightening the undeveloped, downtrodden and ignorant rural masses. Whilst you lack the strength to do away with bourgeois parliaments and every other type of reactionary institution, you must work within them because it is there that you will still find workers who are duped by the priests and stultified by the conditions of rural life; otherwise you risk turning into nothing but windbags.
But it's also not that straightforward. See the footnotes where Lenin discusses Bordiga's non-participation policy.
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