SO what's your excuse then? Lost your polling card under a mountain of bills?

Couldn't get to the polling station before work? The dog ate your homework?

The European elections had a pretty abysmal turnout, with just over a third of people bothering to turn up.

To be fair, in East Lancashire we didn’t do as poorly as some parts of the country.

The average turnout across the UK was 31.9 per cent, but in Blackburn with Darwen 37.73 per cent of us voted. In Burnley 36.06 per cent voted, and in Pendle 44.63 per cent put their cross in the box. Go Pendle!

But really, fewer than four in every 10 people bothering to turn up to have their say about the future of their lives isn't much to shout about, is it?

The solution, it seems to me, is glaringly obvious.

If the Government want the people of Britain to get passionate about politics they're going to have to get Simon Cowell on board.

That's the only way the majority can be persuaded to pick up their phones to express their opinion about something nowadays, isn’t it?

Instead of those dire party political broadcasts, we’d have a Saturday night reality TV show where candidates compete against each other for the public vote.

Each politician would be encouraged to dream-up the best sob-story to increase their popularity.

I can just see Gordon Brown with his hand cocked to his face like a pretend phone mouthing “please vote” and knotting his hands in a prayer while Ant and Dec read out the voting hotline at the bottom of the screen.

Week after week we’d get to know the politicians and their policies and, better still, we’d get to see Cheryl Cole’s wardrobe at the same time.

At the end, instead of a £1million recording contract, a gig for the Queen or a £100,000 prize, the winner would get to be Prime Minister for a year.

After his year was up he’d simply be thrown on the scrapheap alongside Steve Brookstein, Michelle McManus and that Scottish lad, David Sneddon who won Fame Academy and was instantly forgotten.

The remainder of their career would involve scraping a living performing in working men’s clubs.

Of course, I’m joking but maybe those in charge do need to do something to make it easier to vote. Shaming us into it hasn’t worked.

People may have died for us to have a vote but many would rather repeatedly speed-dial Diversity or Susan Boyle to win Britain's Got Talent than vote in the European elections.

The answer, I believe, lies in making voting even easier.

What about having mobile polling stations that visit workplaces or park up in town centres? Most employees would do pretty much anything to get a 15-minute break from work.

Or perhaps internet voting is the way forward? Of course, there would be lots of work needed to protect against fraud, but if postal voting is possible then surely internet voting could be too.

Just a thought.