to vote or not

Maybe you should write to Al Franken and pose that question to him. For *some* reason it was important enough to the state of Minnesota to recount 2.9 million votes in order to ensure the accuracy of the election process.

This of course depends on what country you are in. There are some countries who just have the formalit of voting, but it is as you say predetermine. As in the point above people can be manipulated by media, but largly it is the dumb people who simply buy in hook and sinker to media views without examining individual candidate platforms to understand how each will affect their lives. But as they say never underestimate the power of dumb people in large numbers. However if we go with the ideal that "inteligent people know their vote doesn't matter" which I don't agree with, we get only dumb people voting and we end up with the candidate who is best at manipulating the uneducated rather than the one with the best ideas, and this is a problem.