I agree with Mr de Villiers (Letters, May 10), I too felt unable to vote for anyone in the recent local elections. My only option to register my opinion was to spoil my ballot paper by writing "None of the below" at the top. (I would have written "None of the above", but there was no room at the bottom.)

If representative democracy is to mean anything, the people must be given the chance to reject all of the candidates and to have nominations re-opened. Otherwise, one is left with having to select the best of a bad bunch, rather than being able to demand a better bunch from which to choose.

Dr Duncan Campbell,

Albemarle Road,

York.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.