Filler: Not voting? OK. Mine will mean more

Another election is nearly upon us and, as is traditional, columnists are already mourning the incredibly low voter turnout we'll see on Nov. 8. I should be begging you to get off your duffs, tear yourselves away from the "Three's Company" marathon and head down to the ballot box.

But I'm not really feeling it.

That everybody ought to vote -- and folks who don't bother are somehow letting all the rest of us down -- is taken as a given, but why? Sure, voting is a right that many people of many lands don't enjoy, but that's true of lots of American liberties.

We have the fairly rare right to keep and bear arms, but you never hear of public service campaigns titled "Rock the Handgun Purchases." We can establish wacky religions in America, a practice banned in many places, but there are never any big "Get Out the Llama Worship" drives. Freedom of the press is a wonderful and somewhat unusual privilege, but newspapers never run editorials begging readers to start newspapers. Honestly, we'd rather you don't.

Voting is just about the only right that people make you feel bad about not exercising.

The fact that so many of us blow off the booth says things both positive and negative about the United States.

Every time a nation conducts its first free elections, there's this enormous voter turnout, followed by heartwarming stories on the news about armless, legless Tunisian octogenarians making their way to the polls by inching themselves 26 miles into the village. The point is then made that three-quarters of Americans can't be bothered to stop off on the way home from the matinee showing of "A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas" to cast a ballot.

But often, in an unstable and newly democratized land, people take voting so seriously because it is actually a matter of life or death. They think, "If the wrong party wins I'm pretty sure they're going to kill me." Or ban schools for girls. Or open schools for girls. Or outlaw religions, or force women to limit their fashion statements to garments that resemble tents with eyeholes, or let women wear capri pants in public.

Because our nation is stable, voting here isn't considered a high-stakes game, and that's the good news about our low voter turnout. We don't feel we need to vote, because we don't fear that the wrong election outcome will make things awful.

Picking a candidate on whether she'll adjust tax rates by 3 percent might not awaken your political activism. Picking a candidate on whether he'll dedicate the nation's resources to erecting statues of his sainted mother, hiring Engelbert Humperdinck to sing at parties and bombing Nantucket over a bizarre limerick "misunderstanding," should.

But the nasty aspect of our low voter turnout is that we don't feel the pull of the polls because we don't believe any electoral outcome can make things much better, either. The problems are what they are and the politicians are what they are, full of sound bites but devoid of answers. If we had a candidate who could get spending and taxes under control, create jobs, fix health care or provide us with free, gooey desserts, we'd vote en masse. We don't.

And there are bunches of people I'd prefer keep their ballots to themselves. Mean people. Dumb people. Those who choose candidates based on race or sex or religion. Those looking for a candidate to repress the right people or snuff the right liberties. Folks who vote like they were branded with an "R" or a "D" at birth and can't deviate from it.

I vote because I won't cede my sliver of control over society to others. If you don't mind ceding your power to me by not voting, be my guest.

Lane Filler is a member of the Newsday editorial board.