Editorial: Time to have your say

Decisions, decisions.

Not only is it getting near that time of year many of us struggle to decide what to get our loved ones for Christmas, but we've been hit with a month's worth of important voting decisions.

We'll be choosing our local MPs and our preferred ruling parties, as well as making a call on MMP.

And in Rotorua, our first big vote is already upon us - with less than two weeks left in our district council by-election.

We reported on Wednesday that fewer than 800 people, less than 2 per cent, had voted in the first week of voting, so let's hope a lot more people have started digging their voting papers out of the mail pile with a view to ticking, licking and sticking it in the post box.

You'd think in this day and age an envelope arriving in the mail that wasn't a bill would be a nice enough surprise to warrant extra attention.

Maybe something drastic is needed - like text voting, and Simon Cowell. But Council Idol doesn't really have a nice ring - and 14-year-old girls can't vote, so it's probably not a goer.

And it shouldn't take the bells and whistles of X Factor democracy to get people excited or even just engaged in this decision.

Yes, it's just one seat on the district council, a seat we had already filled last year.

But on a council of 13 elected representatives that one person can really make a difference.

Helping to make decisions that affect our city and our lives is an incredibly important role, and we have a duty to make sure we put the right person in that role. We have a duty to give that person a decent mandate and more than a couple of hundred votes.

And we need to do our bit soon - with postal voting it would pay to have it sent by Monday week.

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