It's no wonder voter participation in past local body elections has been so disappointingly low.

Voters are asked to vote on candidates they have usually never heard of, and they are supplied only with scanty information in the candidates' self-written profiles.

Now that's hardly an honest independent insight into what makes the candidates tick is it? The vast majority of us don't attend candidates' meetings, and most of us don't get around to reading the local media about them. And yet the voting public is expected to cast an informed vote. It's probably better that we ‘sit on the fence' and do nothing rather than cast uninformed votes.

This has inspired a number of groups, including the Tauranga-Bay of Plenty branch of the Green Party to put together a questionnaire to give voters more information about the candidates. The questionnaire has just been sent to all the candidates for the upcoming local body elections ie Tauranga City Council, Western Bay of Plenty District Council and Bay of Plenty Regional Council.

This local democracy initiative allows us, the public, to view the answers of the candidates to 39 probing questions on a diversity of topics and issues from specific local issues like sea lettuce in Tauranga Harbour to global issues like climate change.

This questionnaire is a great step forward in providing voters with the information about the candidates and their beliefs, attitudes and values to allow us to vote more confidently. If you go to www.votebop.org you can view the full questionnaire and the hard questions asked of all the candidates.

The questions are challenging but fair and it should be very interesting to see how candidates answer them. The candidates have until Sept 10 to answer. Those answers will appear at www.votebop.org soon after that. The voting papers will arrive at homes from Sept 17-22 and need to be filled out and sent back before October 9.

Who knows? With local initiatives like this the percentage of voters casting a vote may even go up.

Let the council voting begin!