WHEN election time comes round, what thoughts do you have when it comes to casting your ballot?

Do you even bother to vote?

It is increasingly clear that first past the post (FPTP) General Elections do not solve anything.

FPTP is shown time and again to give 100 per cent of the power to a party rejected by more than half of the electorate.

Another basic failing of FPTP is that it cannot even guarantee that the party with the most votes wins the most seats.

This has happened in the UK in 1951 and 1974. Prior to New Zealand ditching FPTP, the Kiwis also had two wrong winners in 1978 and 1981.

There is an alternative to this sham democracy called proportional representation (PR), which means the number of seats a party wins closely matches their share of the vote.

There is a cross-party campaign for PR called Make Votes Matter (MVM).

More locally, MVM Cheshire will be present in Warrington on Saturday, December 1 when we will be at Buttermarket Street at 11am.

ANDY WATSON Bewsey