There's a new cover version of that popular jingle "Britain 'needs compulsory voting'" out by those wild and crazy dudes at the Institute for Public Policy Research. Backing vocals are provided by Pete "Ha-ha" Hain and Jeff "Ho-ho" Hoon.

But to make a mark in these days of digital media downloads, SMS voting and supermarket sweep the boards it would have to have that something special, and it doesn't. In Ballot Box Jury's "hit or miss" ratings, it gets a resounding "miss". Along with The Truants' version of "We don't need no edgewekashun" and ASBOs "Leave Them Kids Alone" it's always going to fail to sparkle unless some carrot goes with the stick.

To me the carrot in this case has got to be making that vote count for something. Is it any wonder that people lose interest when the voting system means that if you don't predict the (usually) one and only winner correctly you get nothing - nobody to represent your views. And even when you do, you get someone else's choice anyway in the form of a single party candidate.

When in many constituencies and council wards more than half the vote is literally wasted, counting for nothing, and people see little difference between one group of politicians vying for their vote and the next, just forcing them to make up their minds is a recipe for disaster. They even suggest having a "I don't care" box so you wouldn't even have to make up your minds, just tear your minds away from Corrie for half an hour to get down there and do your "civic duty".

No doubt it's another thing they want to add to the National Identity Register in time, and when we're all bar-coded or chipped and pinned or whatever the next stage will be polling station officers will be able to send out little electric shocks to people at five to nine in the evening if they haven't voted yet.

It's clearly policies that count the most though. When we do reach out to a lower than average voting group they do turnout. The Lib Dems have proved this time and again with the student vote. Make the effort and you can lift turnout. Okay, maybe it's not yet the most exciting thing on a student's schedule for the week, but we have turned the corner in many places of student voting apathy.

If you finalise your policies through a focus group intended to be the most bland cross section of everyone in the country round a table of six people, you're not going to produce something to engage everyone - just something that doesn't offend too many.

A couple of years back, Jon Snow, Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University was asked about voter apathy at the end of his Chancellor's lecture. I thought his response was spot on; people are not politically apathetic in the main, they just often channel those energies and opinions in other ways. They didn't see the ballot box necessarily as the way to make their feelings clear about the Iraq war, so they took to the streets in droves. They join Greenpeace or Amnesty. They shamed the government into action last January when they rushed to give their widow's mite to the Tsunami emergency appeal. Strangely, this was just what Peter Hain, in his more enlightened moments said in 2001 - why has he changed his mind?

So, IPPR, if you want to make a difference, perhaps you could have a little think about your initials:

Interesting Policies and Proportional Representation would change peoples' opinion and engage them, not yet more New Labour authoritarian compulsory schemes.

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