Go Vote...or Don't

   Here is a graph that details the reasons people don't vote.  I'm not posting this because I think you should vote.  Choosing not to vote is as important and significant a statement as voting.  For example, if you live in Texas, Mitt Romney has alread won your state's electoral votes, so not voting in that state is a good way to state your objection to several things, including 1) the electoral college system, 2) the Republican party, 3) the cult of voting and politics, 4) and so on.
   Failing to vote is one of the cardinal sins for an American, alongside not appreciating the Troops or not putting your hand over your heart during the National Anthem.  It is often said that if you don't vote, don't complain, as if in such a thing as a presidential election, you are earning your right to bitch about the government by voting.  And maybe that's what most people want anyway: a solid excuse to bitch about the government.  Let me tell you something: I don't plan to vote today, but I suspect I will have many, many solid reasons to bitch about the government.  The difference is I don't care if you think I've earned the right to bitch.
   Remember that this is the beauty of living in a political system like ours, that we don't have to vote, but if we want to we still can.  I am grateful for a democratic system like ours, but I don't believe the hackneyed notions that people have died so that I can vote, or that my voting somehow enhances my freedom.  Presidential elections do not guarantee my freedom, God does; I am "endowed by my Creator" with my freedom, and all the government does is enforce a system to protect my freedom.  Even if I don't vote.

UPDATE 11/7/12: Read this comment from a reader on the New Yorker website.  See the original here.

The problem with living in an ultra religious culture is that everything eventually is either taboo or a god given right. Voting is not a god given right and was never intended to be by the founders. It is a Duty a Right and a Responsibility. If you are given that Right you have a Responsibility to become an informed voter. You then have a Duty to vote. It therefore ought to be Taboo to "Get Out The Vote." Democracy is not well served by coercing people to vote who ought not to.