CONFRONTED by immense apathy in the elections for local councils and the European Parliament earlier this year - when up to three quarters of the people failed to vote - the government resorts to new measures aimed at making it easier and more convenient to vote. We are to see voting booths set up in shopping centres, railway stations, workplaces and post offices.

And there are to be experiments in changing the times or day of voting and even enabling stay-at-homes to vote by telephone or electronically on the Internet.

But however innovative these steps may be, they still bring to mind the old proverb that you can take a horse to water, but cannot make it drink. For short of forcing them to vote by lawthe crux of the issue of restoring the voters' interest is not such much that of better enabling them to vote, but of empowering them more.

For, surely, one of the greatest causes of electoral indifference is the sense among voters that casting their ballot is a waste of time and effort because they are unable to make any difference to the outcome. This may be a basic misconception but there are several grounds for this sentiment that inspires the stay-away syndrome - particularly for council elections and those for the perceivably remote European Parliament and its nigh-anonymous MEPs.

In the case of local government, where a council is already dominated by a single party and a third of the seats are up for election, then it is true that voters have little power to change things. And, in the European polls, where faceless people draw up the parties' lists of candidates on a regional basis, voters cannot be blamed for feeling they are being used as tools of endorsement rather than acting according to their own selection. Reform is needed in both these areas and perhaps with a stronger dose of proportional representation added - something the government blows hot and cold over. And London's forthcoming experience of getting an elected Mayor might well excite voter interest if the system was spread elsewhere and the holder of the office given strong executive powers.

Such steps to make every vote really count are what needs to be added to these reforms if the apathy is to be overturned.

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