The Office of Student Life displays a poster that says: “Vote, Because You Can.” Beside the words, there is a picture of a dog looking like she just came out of a voting booth. The irony, apparently, is unintended.

The poster is there to remind us that, in these tumultuous times, when the decisions of our leaders profoundly affect every one of our lives, Election Day is a time for you, as an eligible voting citizen, to stay the hell home if you don’t know what you’re talking about.

“Because you can?” On the list of reasons to do things, that falls somewhere between “Because it’s better than finding patterns in the wrinkles of my scrotum” and “Because it will please Janeane Garofalo.” When it comes to voting, such reasoning threatens the survival of our republic.

To begin with, voting is not a value or a right in itself. If it were, we would vote on everything our public officials do, including their mistresses. I think I speak on behalf of all my alter-egos when I say that, if it were up to me, no intern whose mug I’d have to see on television every five minutes would have any more chins than she does boobs.

We don’t vote on everything because it would make governance impossibly inefficient. And everything is not subject to a vote because it would make majority dictatorship of the minority inevitable. The fact is that our democracy is a limited process designed by our founders to protect true individual rights – of life, liberty and property – against “any danger from the source; a rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other wicked project,” as James Madison, father of our Constitution, said in Federalist 10.

Today, with far more people eligible to vote, we have complete paper currency, total bankruptcy laws and thousands of such property-dividing federal “wicked projects” that sucked up and squandered $2.1 trillion in private property just last year.

This is why the American system is based on an informed public, not a burgeoning public horny for holes in ballots. Being informed means knowing the difference between one’s true rights and fictitious rights that are in fact privileges for one group at the expense of the rights of another – and at the expense of the freedom of all.

Yet it’s the blind horniness that is being promoted by all the stupid signs and ribbon-chested clipboard bearers all over campus. All that such encouragement does is give an advantage to the politicians who can afford the grandest posters and the most tattooed advertisements on the sluttiest of asses. Since Janeane Garofalo gives a discount to democrats, the left is by far the greatest beneficiary.

It is no coincidence that partisan leftists organize all the major voter registration movements. Modern liberalism is largely the politics of group identity rather than principle, and so the left yearns to capitalize off ignorance in numbers, who are especially vulnerable to demagoguery and pandering. Hence the shamelessly deceitful draft scare tactics being used by MTV/Rock the Vote.

Now, if you think you’re informed about the issues and know what you support and why, then by all means, you probably shouldn’t vote anyway, as this is California and odds are you’re an idiot. But at least your vote is understandable.

If, however, you are uninformed and know it, don’t be a pawn in the plans of sleazy power-seekers who want to have their cake and eat yours, too. Deliver the moon to all those politicians who promise the moon, and don’t vote. The future of our democracy depends on it.

Alec Mouhibian is an undeclared sophomore.