<HTML>Doug writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">The lower your income, the less likely you are to vote. Either the abstainers are very happy with things as they are, and so leave the choice of our rulers to their betters, or they think the choices on offer suck, and it doesn't make a difference which stooge of the status quo wins. Which do you think it is?</BLOCKQUOTE> Not exactly a specimen of dialectical thinking. There could be a whole host of other reasons why people don't vote, starting with regulations that make it difficult for them to register and vote in a timely way. There does happen to be a rather substantial literature from the left on the subject, anchored on the one said by Cloward and Piven, who believe that the non-vote would vote on the left, and thus see the low voter turnout as one of the major reasons why the US has not developed a social democratic/labor party,  and on the other end by Texiera, who says that non-voters would pretty much vote the same way as voters, and that a focus on non-voters is a dead end. Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869) Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass -- </HTML>