Tuesday was Election Day across the country, the first Tuesday of November, the traditional American voting day.

I voted. I make it a point to vote. It is something I have never questioned, something that was inculcated in my persona by my parents, who made it clear to me that when I became of voting age I WAS going to vote just as when I became of college age I WAS going to college.

My Midwest Catholic education also emphasized the importance of participating in the democratic process. We all knew, growing up, and I thought accepted, that we were EXPECTED to vote.

I am a boomer, the child of a time when most of my friends' fathers had marched off to World War II to ensure that they and we could vote.

So now this week's voting is over and the pundits are scouring the ballots for portents of the future. In New York it is widely believed Bloomberg has become damaged in this round and probably will be a one-term mayor. What he supported went down. That's not good according to all the runes being read. Bloomberg is no Clinton, capable of a rebound from a mid-term turndown.

This is the way it is all over the country - analysts are analyzing the ballots cast, projecting what those elected will do and determining what caused the defeats of those vanquished.

All of this can become detached, as if we are watching contests on television rather than participating in a process ourselves.

Once, years ago, I was so shocked that my assistant had never registered to vote much less voted that the depth of my dismay resulted in his registering to vote and in voting - at least in that particular election. [Oh, all right, I probably badgered the man into momentary responsibility.]

But this is important to me. Not so important that I have often stuffed envelopes or manned phone banks but important enough that I participate in the process.

The importance of my vote came home to me this week in stunning clarity as I sought out the results of my local elections in Claverack. In our local, hotly contested Library Referendum, it is not yet known, days later, whether it was passed or defeated. There were 787 yes votes and 791 no votes - just four votes difference. The passage or the defeat of the referendum is going to depend on eight absentee ballots.

Eight votes. Every one critically important to both sides of the issue.

In my entire life, the importance of individual votes has never been so perfectly illustrated, as it was by this election, small by world events standards but massively important in the place I call home.

In the south, Republicans are taking over and the results of Tuesday are shaping the political conversation that will take us all the way to race for the White House.

Rudy Guiliani has emerged in the news this week as a potential successor to Governor Pataki, a not unsurprising turn of events because Pataki, along with Bloomberg, probably won't have a good chance if he stands for election next time - New York State doesn't feel very healthy and the Governor is at the center of that bull's-eye.

The thing that has always amazed me are the numbers of people who do not vote - and I feel it particularly now with all the news of Iraq. More soldiers die every day and the reason we have claimed for our invasion was to set Iraq free, to give them the chance to own their own democracy.

Democracy at its heart is about voting.

The importance of each vote is underscored by the tight race on the Library Referendum in Claverack and by the death of every soldier in Iraq, who has gone there to attempt to give a country the right to vote.