Immanuel Kant was an 18th-century German philosopher who wrote some of the densest and most prolix philosophical treatises I have ever read. He devoted himself, page after page, to the issue of moral rsponsibility. How is the moral man to act?

Central to his philosophy was the idea of the categorical imperative, which is an absolute, unconditional requirement that allows no exceptions, and is both required and justified as an end in itself.

In his treatise on the Categorical Imperative, Kant concluded that all human actions, if moral, must be taken not to achieve what is best for you, or even to accomplish a particular result you desire. The moral act, he said, is the one which, if applied universally, would result in the greatest good. In other words, in a given situation, the moral person acts the way he would want everyone to act if they were faced with a similar choice. [The above paragraph is paraphrased from college notes.]

This should resonate with what we've been told since knee-high to a grasshopper: The Golden Rule.

Apply it to the act of voting. You choose not to vote. Extend that universally, and no one votes. If no one votes, the consequence is chaos and eventually the rise of the strongman and the rule of tyranny.

Therefore, vote. It's the moral thing to do, to preserve everyone's right to choose as well as your own.