Here are some excerpts from an article in today's Washington Post titled "None of the Above":

WARNING FOUL LANGUAGE IS USED BY THE WASHINGTON POST WRITER THAT WILL SURELY OFFEND THE DELICATE SENSIBILITIES OF THE BROWNSHIRTS FOR KERRY:

"MOST AMERICANS WHO ARE ELIGIBLE TO VOTE, DON'T.

It may be hard to believe, and harder to accept, but the numbers are inescapable. In recent presidential elections -- the quadrennial events that are the pinnacle for voter turnout -- roughly half the potential voting population chose not to exercise its franchise. For some off-year elections, barely a quarter of eligible voters show up. Even this year's ballyhooed spike in registration is considered unlikely to boost turnout to 60 percent, or anywhere near.

In short, there is no political force more to be reckoned with, no constituency potentially more influential, no voting bloc potentially mightier, than those who are too lazy or indifferent or disaffected or angry to go to the polls. The candidate of a Nonvoters Party would win in a cakewalk. You know, theoretically.

Most political experts see low voter turnout as a problem to be fixed. Earnest citizen-advocacy literature -- the sort of things passed out at polling places and party headquarters -- makes the passionate argument that every vote counts. Those documents tend to include long, familiar lists of important matters decided by one vote (Thomas Jefferson wins the presidency; Texas enters the Union; France becomes a republic). Unfortunately, such examples, while well-intentioned, are bogus. All of the "elections" cited are not popular votes but votes within legislatures, where one-vote majorities are not only commonplace but typically are illusory -- the deliberate result of leadership compromises on issues.

Every vote, to be impolitic, does not count and never has. In America, no presidential election, no gubernatorial election, no U.S. senatorial election has ever been decided by a single vote at the polls.

All of this raises a valid, if impertinent question: When it comes to voting or not voting, why should any individual give a rat's ass?