By David M. Shribman, Globe Staff, 10/31/2000

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It doesn't make any difference. Things are going pretty well. No one listens to me. It's money, not votes, that matter. All politicians stink anyway.

There are plenty of reasons not to vote. There aren't, after all, a lot of elections that actually turned on one vote. There's plenty that's discouraging in our political system. And it's probably been a while since any politician listened to your advice -- and then took it.

So why vote?

Not because you have to. Lyndon Johnson used to talk about making voting mandatory, like registering for the draft. Nothing became of the idea. And it's not like paying taxes. Your election board won't audit you if you don't turn up on Nov. 7.

But voting is the elemental American political right. The country was founded on all sorts of grand notions - equality, liberty, freedom of expression, just to name three - but, from the start, the right that really mattered was the right to vote. And Alexander Keyssar, the author of a new book on the history of American suffrage, points out that the phrase "right to vote" did not appear in the federal Constitution until the passage of the 14th Amendment in 1868.

In the beginning the vote wasn't given to everyone, or even to a majority of Americans. Great struggles ensued to ensure that women, blacks, and, let us not forget, young people between the ages of 18 and 21, had the fundamental right. The civil rights movement, for example, attacked segregation and obstacles to opportunity, but the pioneers of the movement understood that of all the American rights the vote was the greatest. Because the vote is power.

It is the power to stop politicians in their tracks, or to get them off their duffs. It is the power to place the spotlight of public attention on an issue, or the power to remove it. It is the power to create big government, or to lessen the power of government. It is the power to raise taxes, or to lower them. It is the power to spend more money on education, or to spend less, or even to decide that that power rests with one level of government and not with another.

"Voting is still the most important inputting mechanism," says Kathleen Iannello, a political scientist at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. "The more people, the greater the input is. That sounds like political-science talk, but it is a way to register what you think and how you think."

Not that the rate of voting has been so spectacular in recent years. Four years ago, in the last presidential election, turnout was only 49 percent, the first time since 1924 that the rate had dipped below 50 percent. Though a Wall Street Journal/NBC News Poll taken this month indicated that 90 percent of registered voters say they will vote - an expression more of good intentions than reality - experts believe the turnout next week will be at about the same rate as 1996, perhaps even a bit lower. And new Census Bureau data show a drop in voting among every demographic group except older Americans and black women.

This dip in turnout, which generally dates from a 1960 high, has one precedent, the period between 1896 and 1924. But other factors explain the voting rate for the earlier period. It was, after all, a time when segregation was reimposed in the South and when voting rates among blacks fell significantly. The period includes the enfranchisement of women, which meant that a group comprising half the nation was made eligible to vote, though it was not until 1980 that women voted at the same rate as men. And nativist fears made access to the ballot more difficult than ever.

None of those factors explains the current malaise. And Curtis Gans, the foremost student of the American electorate, dismisses the widespread theory that Americans aren't voting because they are satisfied with the way things are.

"People say voter turnout is tied to voter satisfaction. But it isn't," says Gans, who is director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate. "The last time we had a sustained recovery was in 1960, and we had the highest turnout since women were given the suffrage. The people who vote the least are at the bottom end of the income scale, the bottom end of the age scale, and the bottom end of the education scale. That is not a portrait of happy people who are not participating because they are so satisfied. And there is not one poll - not one - that shows that nonvoters are happy and satisfied."

Indeed, the virtual abandonment of voting rights by some of the very groups that tried so desperately to win them has warped American democracy. "The voices of the more privileged are heard more loudly in the halls of governance, and the ideal of democracy - that all voices be heard equally - is constantly undermined," writes Keyssar in "The Right to Vote," the first major examination of American suffrage in 80 years.

Many experts on American voting believe the dip in turnout poses grave dangers to the political system. Gans calls voting a "least-common-denominator political act," and he contends that people who don't vote tend not to be involved in other social or civic activity in a sustained way.

He argues, moreover, that when people don't vote they allow our politics to be dominated by the interested and the zealous. And he worries that if young people continue to vote at a 12 percent rate, which they did in the midterm congressional elections in 1998, there is a bleak future for political leadership and political participation. Low turnouts could make the nation vulnerable to unchecked authority and demagogy.

Politicians themselves are worried about low turnout. When Congress reauthorized the Higher Education Act in 1998, for example, it voted to require every college participating in federal student-aid programs to make an effort to distribute voter-registration material. A number of student-service organizations are urging students who are engaged in volunteer activities to vote. A program called Take Your Kids to Vote urges parents to "make voting a family tradition."

Some students at Guilford College, a small liberal-arts institution in Greensboro, N.C., this fall are examining young people's voting habits in a course called "Political Participation and Elections." Joe Carrig, a political scientist who teaches the course, says his students are examining the fundamental question of democratic society: "Do we need everyone actively involved in the system to have effective government?" Many of his students say it is not "wholly rational" to vote.

So why vote?

Because the winner of the presidential election will face enormous challenges and important choices. Because the result of the election will affect how much money you have, how your children are educated, how your retirement portfolio will look, how your medical bills are paid, how your friends and relatives will be protected from crime and from international threats.

All that plus one more thing. Voting is the defining act of American citizenship, a right (as veterans will tell you) to die for, a right (as veterans of the women's suffrage and civil rights movements will tell you) to fight for. It is the ultimate right and responsibility of community. It also gives you a precious American right: the right to complain about the bums in office.