For generations, we Americans have been facing the increasingly obvious reality that voting isn’t the sum of elections.  Debates about the Electoral College, scandals about easily manipulated voting machines, recounts, and Oval Office hijacking have all become realities that we discuss at our dinner parties with those brave enough to talk politics among friends.  We have become disillusioned, debriefed, even disenfranchised; and each year we hear the cries of millions, saying they will abstain from voting.

There are many reasons why people abstain.  Some are unintentional (“Oh, was that today?”).  Some are rooted in a misguided sense of integrity (“I refuse to vote against someone…”).  Some are founded in a complete apathy (“Who cares who the president is?”).  And some are just plain ridiculous (“The line was too long, and I didn’t feel like waiting.”)  All are based in ignorance.

While Occupy Voting Booths is making an honest and honorable attempt to reach out to voters, educate them, and help them through the voting process, other branches of the movement are speaking out against voting.  Occupy Denver even posted a recent graphic on their Facebook page with the iconic v-shaped check mark that read “F*ck The Vote,” instead of the traditional “Rock The Vote.”  While I am not criticizing the Denver camp (a grassroots movement is composed of many perspectives), I do want to call a spade, “a spade.”

Discouraging people, especially the strong, talented, educated people within this movement, from voting is a dangerous game in such critical political times.

I completely understand the ideology behind the stand for abstinence.  The system is a mess.  The players are all corrupt.  The honor has left the game.  The voting booths do not determine the outcome.  So, why bother?  If Occupy stands for revolution, why would we participate in the very system we are trying to take down?  I’ll tell you why.

First and foremost, until there is something new in place (and I don’t mean in parks across the country, I mean “in place” nationally, politically, wholly), this is what we have, and it’s in charge of our fate for the time being – like it or not, for better or for worse.  Regardless of how big the money is, how powerful the lobbyists are, how filthy the overreaching players may be, the popular vote can tip the scales.  Granted, that tilt may be quite minimal, but in cases of close elections – as I imagine this one will be – it can make a difference; and with the candidates on the board this run, that may mean all the difference in the world.

Now, I’m going to avoid the argument of which candidate would be the better choice.  I’m keenly aware of the Reagan-Era Republican masquerading as a Democratic incumbent and what a civil rights nightmare he is (in fact, he’s a nightmare in many areas).  I’m also frightfully cognizant of the vulture capitalist on the other side, who was born into the corporate world, who would undoubtedly run us even further into the crap-game of national corporative economics, and who can’t seem to commit to any point of view outside of his spiritual dedication to a human god living on the planet Kolob who impregnated the otherwise virgin Mary through quite traditional means.

I admit, for two very different reasons, these presidential candidates are both highly undesirable and extremely dangerous.  However, at some point, we have to accept the reality that one of them is going to be President, no matter how successfully we rally and march in the next six months.

It is undeniably true that we, the people, need to take the power back.  We need to combat the progress of a system that has gone to hell and taken us with it.  We need to put new political messages, means, and movements into place, but we cannot ignore the current state of things as we work toward that change.

Exercising our right to vote is one of the (extremely) few powers we still have in this country.  If we throw our hands up and walk away from the only thread, no matter how frayed, that holds us to our government, we forfeit the only power we have to influence a system that is in all other measures stacked completely against us.

Voting this year will not be about selection.  It will be about damage control.  It will not be to elect a new leader.  It will be to prevent an even more vicious reality for us to work against during the next four years.

Is this an ugly, sad, and patriotically pathetic truth?  Yes.  Yes, it is, but sometimes we have to work within the confines of what we have to get what we want.  There was never an immigrant who got off a boat on our shores and made a life for himself and his family by saying, “Forget it.  They don’t want to hire me because I’m black/Irish/Italian/Jewish/Russian/…, then I won’t work.”

The idea of abstaining from a vote because it hasn’t offered you a candidate you can believe in, and that such practice is somehow better or more noble than fulfilling your moral and political obligation to the nation you are trying desperately to save is plainly moronic.  It is fundamentally the same as the child who stomps off the playground shouting, “If I can’t win, I won’t play.”

None of this, by the way, is to mention the terrible impact it would have on the outcome if we removed from the voting pool all the forward-thinking, social-justice oriented, politically aware people who tend to flock toward the movement.

In my eyes, it is not only the duty of all Americans to vote, but the duty of Occupy to make sure people are voting with their eyes open.  After all, the only thing more dangerous than abstaining from the vote is voting misinformed.

Get out there, Occupiers, and help preserve what little we have left.  If we want to build a future worth having, we have to first secure a future to build.  The fate of this nation is in our hands… now more than ever.