Democracy dead?

Bristol has said yes to an Elected Mayor - just  - 53% Yes, 47% No, with the majority a mere 5152 votes, see here. Just one person in ten voting at worst and one in three voting at best is a very worrying statistic however (see here). Everyone involved in any way in politics and outside it should be thinking hard about what can be done to change things and get people enthused about and involved in the decisions that affect their lives and those of others.

I’d like to see whoever gets elected as the first Mayor of Bristol commit themselves to consulting the people directly on a lot more issues. The technology now exists to make this easy and cheap to do eg via laptop or mobile...

If the numbers voting stay low or decrease further perhaps we should make voting compulsory? I'd be happy to see this, provided ballot papers had a box with 'none of the above' where voters could put their cross. As it is people are entitled not to vote and that's our democracy - though problems of legitimacy must arise as the numbers voting fall.

If 'none of the above' was an option we'd have to decide what would happen if that option won the election though!