It's important to make sure you are registered to vote.  It's more important to take advantage of the opportunity.  I read an interesting article on why we vote and why on %58 of Americans do vote. 

Voting is personally costly. It takes time to register and to learn about the candidates' views. On election day, you may need to leave work, stand in long lines or slog through harsh weather, knowing all the while that the chances your individual vote will make a difference among the thousands, or millions cast, are pretty much zero.

"The probability that I'll be the deciding vote in the 2008 presidential election is much smaller then the chance that I'll get hit by a car on the way to the polls," says Florida Atlantic University's Kevin Lanning, PhD, paraphrasing an observation made by the late University of Minnesota psychologist Paul E. Meehl.

"If we look at it in those terms alone, it appears to be irrational," Lanning says.

So why do we bother? Read more