Rob Fried lives in Concord.

There’s a lot of cynicism abroad in the land, cynicism that turns into apathy, apathy that leads almost 40% of our citizens to stay home on election day. They are people who feel that it doesn’t matter who we vote for because nothing ever changes. People who are tired of all the negative ads that bombard us daily. People who don’t think there’s any real difference between one politician and another. People who believe that their vote won’t count.

I’m old enough to remember when Democrat John Durkin eked out a victory over Republican Louis Wyman by just two votes, in their race to become one of New Hampshire’s two senators. So your vote, in this closely fought election, really does matter.

But why should you care? Talk to someone who’s lived under a dictatorship: in Cuba or Venezuela, in Russia or China, in Egypt or Burma or North Korea, or any other country that’s ruled by an authoritarian dictator. They will all tell you that democracy does matter. It matters a lot. They will point out that democracy makes all kinds of freedom possible. Freedom of religion; freedom to speak your mind; freedom to live your own life according to your principles; freedom to open a business or choose your career.

Democracy, government by the consent of the people, is America’s greatest gift to the world. We were a democracy when the rest of the world was ruled by kings, emperors, and despots of one kind or another. Some of those countries tried to destroy us, to keep democracy from spreading. Some countries are still trying to kill our democracy, invading us with social media falsehoods instead of with armies. They fear that if their own citizens were able to vote in a free election, they would lose their power and end up in jail.

Democracies are messy. People argue; they often shout at one another or wave signs denouncing those who disagree. But democracy works. In an imperfect world, it’s the best we’ve got, even with all its imperfections, to preserve our precious freedoms.

But freedom, as many have said, is not free. It requires us to participate as citizens, and that means, first and foremost, to learn about the issues, to assess the candidates, and then to vote. In this election, we have a choice that’s more consequential than any in my memory. It’s a choice between preserving our democracy and our freedoms or turning our government over to people who want to divide us, to throw out our civil servants and put in their cronies, to make us hate and fear one another. One candidate even tells us that if we vote for him just this once, we won’t ever have to vote again.

If you choose to sit this one out, you and your children and grandchildren will pay that price.