> This is special pleading on behalf of Shane, Carrol, Joseph Catron and others who regard those who sit out elections as having more political intelligence and insight than those poor besotted rubes who are conned into voting for the Democrats every couple of years. This fits with their schema that people can only defend their interests in the streets, and that electoral politics is at best irrelevant and at worst in contradiction to building a mass movement. Doug has referred to Pew studies showing there is no correlation between political abstention and political belief. My own sense is that there is some correlation, but the obverse of that offered by Shane et al - that the least inclined to vote are typically the most oppressed, atomized, and least politically conscious sectors of the population, what Marxists used to refer to as the "lumpenproletariat".
Let me qualify this last sentence before someone justifiably calls me on the carpet for it. Half the American population which doesn't vote are not all "lumpen". There is now a large mass of students and a more mobile workforce, among other factors, which reduces voter turnout, as well as Shane's cohort of skeptical abstainers who understand that neither party delivers what they promise. I think the statement still largely holds true of societies where there is a high voter participation rate, however, but that is only an impression.