No way! Voting is the least effective voice. </minor vanperbole> Really, the US voting system is a joke - electoral college, gerrymandering, felony disenfranchisement, ballot errors, black box voting, plurality voting, exclusionary "debates", on and on and on. If you want to get something done it needs to happen outside the voting booth!
void, don't worry about voting (that is a vote in itself).
Wrong - you are not going to have any measurable changes to the system through just spreading information and protesting. You need to be a part of the system to change it, from the inside - this would include voting your own people to office. There is very little permanent change you can affect without voting taking place somehow, someway.
I think W's administration has made it clear that it does not care what the people, media, or even other parts of the administration want, instead making believe that there is no substantial opposition.
On "measurable change"? What do you want changed? Give me an example. You think voting for Dude #1 is going to get that thing changed? I suspect getting active and putting pressure on politicians/the bureaucracy is what actually makes change. It is called "voting with your feet". Most obviously, The Civil Rights Movement was about activism, not voting. I'm not saying politicians in office don't matter, I am saying that if some issue matters to you, you are a fool to leave it up to casting a vote.