Increasing voter engagement

The old saying that 'you can fool some of the people some of the time but you can't fool all of the people all of the time' is highly relevant here.

Voters know what matters and what does not. Their participation in the political process reflects their judgement of the relative importance of the people they are electing and the decisions they make.

We cannot create real engagement through public relations and just telling people that 'we' (the political establishment) want them to engage. If people genuinely believe that their involvement matters then many of them, though not all, will become more active.

This is not simply the 'make votes count' argument that is used to support PR electoral systems. PR per se makes votes count more for the politicians but not necessarily for the public.

Instead, it is the agenda of creating truly powerful autonomous local government that may lead to greater voter engagement.