A vote for changes

It is time for a fundamental change to the British voting system. Firstly, we should be doing away with polling stations and counts where we stick pieces of paper to other pieces of paper to tally up the vote. These cost a great deal of money to the ratepayer.

Postal voting is a must and everybody should be required to vote. There should be a section of the ballot paper to say that you do not wish to vote for any of the candidates. All of these ballot papers could then be put through a machine and the results would be known much sooner after the election.

There should be fines for not voting, as Duncan says in his article.

Also, we should change how we select candidates – for instance, in a parish council election, the candidate should live in that parish and in a district election they should live in the district and in the county election, they should live in that county.

Would-be MPs should also live in the constituency in which they would like to stand for at least five years, so that they have a good grounding in the needs of that constituency. It would also stop political parties at high level choosing the candidates and would give more power to local parties in choosing their own candidates.

Tony Squires, town and Arun Labour councillor for Littlehampton Ham ward

Belloc Road

Wick