Given the success of Lynton Crosby and the various concentration camps built up for “processing” asylum seekers, how’s that working out for you?

Compulsory voting could lead (like the poll tax) to people disappearing off the register, which defeats the object of the exercise. Chasing people for fines could also prove expensive under compulsory voting. Both these methods would also reduce the gap in turnout between European, local and General elections.

To combat fraud any payment would have to be accompanied by the production of photo id, but I think this is long overdue in our voting process anyway! Our voting system seems to rely too much on trust.

A lot of people find it insulting that a financial incentive is needed to encourage turnout. I think it could be seen as an expenses payment. It does happen to cost time and money to go to the voting booth.

It is I suppose a sad indictment of political engagement that this might be needed. Voting is supposed to be a civic duty. However. in this case I think the ends justify the means.

Overall I think that the differential turnout between rich and poor, young and old, is too important not to be addressed. Of course the present voting system means your geographical location affects the importance of your vote, and this has to be changed as well. Every vote should have equal importance! Lets move to AV+ as a first step on the road to proportionality!

Knocking a tenner off Council Tax is a nice idea – but as CT is assessed by household and not by individual, that will probably benefit some more than others. Also it won’t be such an incentive to those who don’t pay council tax such as students, and those on benefits who received council tax benefit – parts of society that often produce the lowest turnout.

1) Move to a fixed term, rather than the PM calling one whenever he feels like it. I don’t want to cancel my holiday abroad in order to vote because Tony thinks next month would be convenient for him.

2) Come up with something so that people don’t get punished (after all, a law with no associated punishment for breaking it is pointless) just because Royal Mail managed to lose your postal vote down the back of the sorting machine, or you broke an arm and spent the day in hospital.

Personally, I think it’s a really, really bad idea.

I think it tends to make people more conscientious. It is not so much that we have to go, as a realisation that everyone does, so there’s a wave of thinking and talking about it that goes around the community. People think that if they are going anyway, they should give it some consideration.

I personally don’t like the fact that our future lies in the hands of swinging voters, but that is really the case in any system. And swinging voters do have a good argument in their defence – why should their future depend on rusted on voters who are immune to thought? Like me, really. No-one is every going to budge me from the left.

There is no such thing as a perfect system. One of our big bugbears is the sheer size of electorates. They can cover tens of thousands of square kms, and only represent a handful of people – many less than in a city electorate. And in the senate, there’s the same number from each state, which is hardly fair.

My personal bete noir is the right to advertise. When you get parties allowed to advertise on television, particularly in 30 second grabs, then you have a recipe for trash sloganeering. We had a vote a few years ago about abolishing this, but the dumb democrats decided it was a restriction on free speech. Need a minder to find their mouths, some of those people.

I want a bloody law about accuracy in campaigning. Even if these things can only be contested after an election and are hideously technical, they would soon be a deterrent, particularly with a few regulations about innuendo.

Might work. Never know. Britain needs proportional representation, or at least preferential voting.

I believe this (probably without the last part) is how it works in elections to the Russian Duma – at least, it was when open Duma elections started (or resumed). At that first election, at least, several contests actually did have to be re-run because abstentions were too high – they were using something like the French presidential system, with run-offs, but the rule was that the winning candidate had to have the support of 50% of the electorate, and in some constituencies that wasn’t possible even if the votes of the second candidate were included. (Or, er, something like that – I’ve probably got this horribly wrong.)

I have been told by Australians that the main method of protest there is to spoil the ballot. They have a very complex preferential voting system (at least for their Senate) so it’s easy to spoil it.

“None of the above” could possibly work if, when it won an election, no MP were returned from that election, a by election had to be called immediately, and no one who stood in the General Election could stand again.