Not voting is a perfectly valid option

One surefire indication of approaching elections is a sudden, almost morbid interest other people will invariably develop in your own voting intentions.

I have voted in five elections, starting in 1992, and it's always been the same. There has always been a wave of subtle (and sometimes very unsubtle) pressure, piled on prospective voters, to make sure they: a) 'exercise their democratic right to vote', and; b) that they exercise this right exclusively to the benefit of their own party of choice.

Let us close an eye for a moment at the pressure from the political parties themselves. Personally I have no real issue with the concept: they are selling a product, and just like other salesmen they are fully within their rights to try and convince us to buy it.

There are, of course, limits. If a car insurance salesman tried calling you 70 times in a single day, I am fairly confident he would wind up in court (or hospital) for harassment. Yet we all seem to just accept the same form of harassment from political parties, without ever complaining too loudly.

To be honest it is the other category that befuddles me: those ordinary citizens who seem to lie awake at night worrying that: oh dear, this time round, voter-turnout may drop from 96% to only 92%! Good heavens, what on earth are we all going to do?

And yet, the problem with Maltese politics is the other way round. Voter turnout is not too low: it's way, way too high. That 96% figure I mentioned earlier? I didn't pull it out of a hat. It's been the norm in most recent elections - and this in itself is a certificate of ill-health for our democracy as a whole.

Fairly recently, an Australian researcher looked into voting habits in Western democracies for his doctoral thesis. Naturally, Malta's abnormally high turn-out stood out like a sore thumb. So the researcher wrote in to the Times, asking locals why they felt compelled to vote, etc.

A few months later, he wrote back to express his dismay at the replies he received: which were by and large variations of: 'we vote only because we feel pressured to... people will resent you if they perceive you as 'different'... the political parties have automatic access to data on non-voters... so they can identify you and 'blacklist' you afterwards..."

Ugh! What an ugly, premature end to the otherwise beautiful theory of: "Malta! The magically democratic island where anyone feels so wonderfully enthusiastic about exercising their democratic rights, that even the dying are wheeled out of their hospitals on polling day!"

Meanwhile pressure is piling up even as I write. If you don't vote (we are told), you will either be 'betraying the sacrifices made by former generations', or (worse) 'forfeiting your right to complain afterwards'.

Both these arguments are total bollocks, I'm afraid. The first reminds me of that other ridiculous logical fallacy: 'You should finish what's on your plate because there are starving children in Africa!' (to which my reply used to be: 'well, how many children in Africa will be saved from starvation, by the fact that I've half gorged myself to death?'

As for the second argument: it completely overlooks human rights, to which you are entitled regardless of whether or not you participate in what is ultimately a power struggle. If you are denied your human rights, you are perfectly entitled to complain - your choice of voting or abstaining is utterly irrelevant. (Not to mention that if you pay taxes, you are entitled to express disagreement with how that tax money is administered).

Underlying both those concepts, of course, is an unpleasant dogma which I find strongly reminiscent of the way certain religions impose themselves on society... through GUILT.

I do not accept this from religion; still less do I accept it from people who have no claim to any authority whatsoever.

The bottom line, however, is that 'not voting' is every bit as valid a democratic statement as voting... and here is why.

If do you vote for a particular party, you can rest assured your vote will afterwards be interpreted as a total and unconditional endorsement of ALL that party's platform (yes, including all those bits you don't actually want to see enacted). That same party will never pause to question whether its own supporters are happy or otherwise with its performance, ideology or direction; they will simply pocket your vote as if it were their own private property... which leaves you, the voter, entirely out of the picture.

Your non-vote, on the other hand, can never be counted within that tally. Instead it will be added to a statistic representing all those who had considered the existing options, but decided they were unsatisfied with any of them.

And so long as that statistic hovers around 4% - which incidentally includes the infirm, the dying and possibly even THE DEAD (if they died between publication of election register and polling day)... well, who can blame political parties for pretending those people don't even exist?

If, on the other hand, the army of non-voters grows to, say, 12, 15 or 19%... well, suddenly the entire ballgame will have changed. Political parties might conceivably want to know why such a large proportion of electorate had snubbed their manifesto. And who can tell? Maybe they might actually start trying to find out what voters really want, and tailor their programme accordingly.

Call me a lunatic, but I have come round to believing that a significant drop in voter turn-out might achieve much, much, MUCH more in the way of political reform for the country, than the efforts of any one political party to achieve change from within (or without) Parliament.

But having said all this - I won't pressure you not to vote. For all I care you can all vote away to your hearts' content... till the cows come home, the chickens cross the road and the lamb lies down on Broadway. Just don't bother me about it, that's all.