People should be made to vote

EACH week the Advertiser prints a great deal of political rhetoric and the literary ping pong generated continues ad infinitum.

Part of the problem is the present voting system currently allows the majority of the population to be apathetic and not use their vote at all.

An example of this concerns Sarah Champion who became MP for Rotherham. Her vote was 46.3 per cent of those that voted, however, as the turnout was a derisory 33.9pc, it meant that approximately less than one sixth of the total population of Rotherham actually voted for he and her party.

The same skewed results will keep on happening in elections as the apathetic majority, despite there being independent candidates in addition to the mainstream, continue to quote ‘they’re all as bad as each other’. How do they know this without first giving new blood a chance to put a different viewpoint?

Until we have dynamic change in our present voting system we will remain in the days of the Rotten Boroughs prior to the 1832 reform act when few people had the vote to use.

It’s time that we ensured that the electorate had to at least go to a polling station even if it is to vote ‘none of the above’.

Colin Levesley, Broom