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When eligible voters do not participate, what do you expect? 

Editor: 

We have just witnessed an audacious demonstration of partisan politics on the part of the U.S. Supreme court, the Florida legislature, their Secretary of State and the Republican party at large. This abuse of democratic principle did not, however, develop in a vacuum.  

Had there been a healthy participation in the process by most eligible voters it would have been very unlikely that these political power brokers could have gotten away with what they did.  

This kind of cancerous exploitation of the body politique is made possible by the anticipation of voter apathy and the endemic complacency that characterizes modern American politics.  

Does anyone really believe with a voter turnout of 80-90 percent that we would have what is essentially a tie in Florida? Or, that the Republicans could fly their legislative and judicial hypocrisy in the face of an involved and informed voting public? Or that Ralph Nader, the only candidate who generated any real passion, could be kept out of the national television debates by a commission cynically created by and for the two major parties? 

As long as 50 percent of the eligible voters sit on their hands in supercilious relation to their responsibilities as citizens of a democracy, we are inviting these kinds of outrages and insults to the integrity of the process we supposedly esteem.  

There was no excuse for not voting in this election. A wide range of choices across the political spectrum was on that ballot. Moreover, there are always local elections, bond issues and initiatives to consider.  

People forget that young men got their guts blown up on the beaches of Normandie and elsewhere so as to protect our  

right to vote and have that  

vote counted. 

Those of us who are too busy or cynical to bother educating ourselves and spending a few hours each year making reasoned decisions on who shall lead us and how our lives should be governed don't deserve to live in a country based on these values.  

Eligible nonvoters should be fined and if still unconvinced, deported to a country where they DO THE VOTING FOR YOU! 

Freedom is part and parcel of the ethos of our country. But the freedom to do nothing is not part of that social-political contract. It's time to send these holier than thou parasites a strong message: Take your smug, self-satisfied complacency....elsewhere. 

Marcus O'Realius 

Oakland