"It's marvellous to live in a free and democratic country where you can do or say anything you want." Unless, of course, you choose not to vote, in which case you should be punished.

In her article "Let's fine people too lazy to vote" (The Argus, March 31), Rebecca Maer's views appear to give no consideration of the problems which create voter apathy. Fining people who fail to turn up to their polling station would only add to the alienation of the non-voters.

The problem of voter apathy stems from the fact the first-past-the-post, electoral system our country employs almost guarantees only two political parties have any chance of election.

Due to the blurring of the differences between the Conservatives and New Labour, people are realising whoever is in power, at local or national levels, there will be no change to their standard of living.

This is why people will not vote - they feel their vote will make no difference and they will receive no benefit.

This also explains the movement from voters being committed to a certain party to the growth in issue voting, illustrated by Michael Howard's attempting to gain votes by picking on specific cases rather than policy areas.

That people vote for the "tedious nonentity", Channel 4's Big Brother is not to be mocked but, rather, something those concerned with voter turnout could learn from.

She should be asking: "Why are people willing to pay to vote for a television show but not willing to vote in elections?"

It is probably because they care who wins Big Brother, whereas they do not care enough who wins an election to "shoehorn their bottoms off the sofa and stagger to the nearest polling station".

Fining people who need to be "snapped out of this lethargy" can only estrange those who don't vote thus becoming not part of the solution but part of the problem.

While millions died in two world wars to ensure our democratic rights, we must remember they were also fighting and dying to guarantee our rights to live in a liberal society where each individual has the right to act or not as they wish.

There are many approaches to the problem of low voter turnout, such as improving the level of understanding of the political system but, at the end of the day, the best way to ensure voter turnout is to make people care, not to threaten them.

-Mark Crowter, Hove