Well that's my civic duty done although I was a little perturbed to be asked if I wanted to vote for both the local elections and the AV referendum. Are people bothering to go out and vote and half arsedly only bothering to vote for one or the other. After all while you're there you might as well scrawl your X on two pieces of paper - how hard can it be. In the end the decision was straight forward: Yes to AV was a no brainer and the council elections were rather straight forward - 3 candidates from 10 with 3 from the main political parties and 1 Independent who I knew little of save for a badly printed and misspelled flyer that came through the letterbox. Now that Labour are in opposition the guilt one feels at voting for them or rejecting them because of differences of opinion / poor performance are gone so I happily selected all three Labour candidates wiping out any memory of choosing the LibDems at the last 2 General Elections.
   That is the problem of many arguments for and against changes to the voting system but it exists under the current system also and that is no matter how you vote you can not guarantee a proper selection of candidates to choose from. The last two elections saw me vote LibDem as I became disillusioned with Labour and there was no viable left wing alternative on the ballot paper. We once had a Respect candidate in what may have been a European election and there may have been someone from the SWP but that has been the sum total since 1997. Plenty from UKIP, Veritas and the BNP but no Greens or even Monster Raving Loonies and seldom few independents at least those who have more of a profile than a blurred photo and whose policies are little more than being unhappy with the current system.
   I would like to think that a win for the Yes camp would encourage smaller parties to take part but that may be wishful thinking, besides looking at the polls it would seem the public don't like change.