The following guest editorial by Jim Wright, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, was first published in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on November 1, 1998, but the only thing not still relevant today is the short reference to Newt Gingrich and the possibility of a Clinton impeachment. Everything else Wright has to say is just as relevant, if not more so, as it was before the 1998 elections.

"Freedom is like an insurance policy," Sam Rayburn used to say. "It's premiums have to be kept up to date."

Voting is our way of doing that. It's a right won by heroes' blood, and a duty no less imperative to the survival of a free society than bearing arms in its defense.

Some people think it's a bore.

How we vote, and how many of us vote, is the ultimate expression of our nationhood. Casting our ballots in a federal election is the one thing Americans do together every two years. Except for those who opt out. The civic freeloaders.

The ancient Greeks had a word for them. Athenians coined the term idiotes, signifying "those who do not participate in public affairs."

For weeks the political scribes and talk show pundits have been forecasting public inertia, voter apathy. We're fat and satisfied and won't vote, they tell us. Or, we're disgusted with the banality of partisan politics and won't vote. Or, nobody really cares about substantive issues like education, social security, health care, and campaign finance reform. And so we won't vote. Only angry people vote, they say knowingly.

Most assume that next Tuesday's congressional elections will be marked by an abnormally low turnout.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if the American people proved them wrong?

We could, you know. We have before. There's nothing more refreshing than a plain people's revolt against the vapid assumptions of those who think they have us pegged.

It happened just 50 years ago, in 1948. Harry Truman didn't have a chance, we were told. He'd be snowed under by Thomas E. Dewey's well-organized, well-financed campaign. The election was just a formality.

Then the people spoke!

Well, yes, it could happen again. If most people do not want President Clinton to be impeached, for example-as published opinion samplings seem to indicate-they can go to the polls and vote out Newt Gingrich's Republican House majority. The GOP-dominated House is clearly headed to impeach Clinton next year. Voter intervention on Tuesday may be the only thing that could stop that.

Neither Democratic nor Republican candidates are making that an issue. Most don't like to talk about it. They'd prefer to glide by individually on local issues. Or personality. Or sneaky ads, ostensibly paid for by someone else, telling us what rotten stinkers their opponents are.

"Personally, I don't like negative ads," a former congressional colleague told me last week, "but you have to admit they're effective." Character assassination works. Sometimes. For a while.

But I have to believe there's an inherent sense of justice in the American people that will not let it prevail indefinitely.

Voters could put a stop to it. They're the only ones who can.

How can private citizens effectively express their disgust with gutter tactics that degrade our political process? Not by staying away from the polls. By voting for candidates who have positive agendas and do not engage in campaigns of fear and smear.

On the other hand, if we want to leave democracy in the hands of the haters and the angry, boycotting the ballot box clearly contributes to that end. Campaigns will just get nastier and nastier to agitate anger, more and more dependent on big contributors to pay for the ugly ads, less and less involved with ordinary people like ourselves.

That's what we buy when we stay away from the polls.

American politics has drifted too far already from its public moorings. There was a time, a generation or so ago, when elections were a people business. People turned out in considerably greater numbers to hear and question candidates in person.

As a result, they knew their public officeholders better, trusted them more, identified with them more closely.

Candidates cultivated people, great numbers of people. They built people-oriented organizations, with huge armies of volunteers. They weren't nearly as dependent, therefore, on big financial contributors. Their loyalties were the masses. They empathized with their needs, understood their concerns. Thought their thoughts. Expressed their hopes.

People didn't feel powerless to influence events, as increasing numbers confess feeling today. They felt, and were, part of this pulsating process called democracy.

In my last contested campaign for reelection to Congress, in 1986, there were 6,000 individual block captains with self-assumed responsibility for canvassing every voter in the city blocks on which they lived, and promoting turnout on election day.

Thirty-three thousand local families displayed my signs in their front yards.

Media advertising? Always previously, I'd bought 30-minute television programs in prime viewing time and answered questions called in by viewers.

These programs became prohibitively expensive. In 1954, 30 minutes on the dominant station at 7:30 in the evening had cost $560. In 1980, I'd paid $8,000. By 1986, the same station-now with a smaller share of the market-wanted $35,000.

So we used radio. At prime drive times. We recruited several hundred individual voters. Each cut a one-minute audio tape, all using their own messages, in their own voices.

That, to me, is democracy. It's a people business. Not like a corporation with preferred stock, the most votes going to the biggest investors. Everyone owns an equal piece of it. And each of our votes counts-just as much as that of the wealthiest or most prominent person in town.

But democracy has a price: your participation.