Brad,
> I tried to hedge it a little. But I do think that if you
> don't vote, you are making a substantial mistake?
No.
I don't mean to belittle the franchise, as I believe it is an important right, but often it is a meaningless exercise. The presidential candidate who most represents my views is David McReynolds, but if I cast a ballot for him it will be as if it never happened. There will be no news coverage, not acknowledgement that he received any votes at all.
I live in Massachusetts, so all of the races are foregone conclusions - Ted Kennedy will win his Senate seat, as even the Republican party has urged voters not to support the Republican candidate, and Gore is way ahead of Bush here. My vote really is meaningless, as the odds that my vote might change the outcome of a major election is zero (although this may not be true of the local contests).
I could get much more attention by getting some buddies together and staging a "Tea Party" demonstration in Boston Harbor, or staging some other kind of demonstration.
Participation in a democracy should mean a more than voting every 2 years, although voting was the primary (in fact the only) civic responsibility touted in my elementary school. Sure, its important, but a citizen's responsibility doesn't end there, not by a long shot, and to focus on the franchise and essentially ignore other means of being politically active is to argue for a docile and pliant electorate.
Brett