The core is colour: applying a tint to a surface. From there the family fans out two ways. One branch stays with paint and dye, the colour, the painter, the act of dyeing, the painted thing. The other branch follows a surprising turn: to point with a finger, and from pointing, to vote. Watch closely: do not confuse this root with צ־ב־א (army), which only looks similar. And the word hyena and hypocrite hide here too, because both are 'painted over'. Every word is verified against pealim, niqqud included.
The same root runs through the verb system. Each binyan is a voice: it bends the one idea into active, passive, causative or reciprocal. Tap to hear.
The pa'al colours, the nif'al is its passive (gets coloured). The hif'il is the fascinating one: it does not mean 'to cause to paint' but jumps to pointing a finger, and since a vote in Hebrew is raising a hand to point, לְהַצְבִּיעַ also became 'to vote'. The pi'el and the passive moulds are not lexicalized here.
Same root letters, different noun moulds (mishkalim). The mould tells you the function: who does it, the act of doing it, or the thing produced.
Strip the prefixes, suffixes and vowels. Three consonants remain, and the meaning lives there.