Here’s to democracy! On May 7 this year I will have the future of the country in my hands, quite literally.

In a slightly surreal way I will trudge across a car park and enter a village hall. Stopping at a desk to have my name crossed off a very long list, I will pick up a scrap of paper and move across the room to a rather Heath Robinson-looking booth. A small, stubby pencil on a short string awaits me – and it’s at that point that the gravity of the occasion hits me. I could be the one vote that determines the outcome of the General Election.

A vote cast with a single pencil cross in the box could start the dominoes falling, could tip the balance in Salisbury, could propel the largest party into power in Westminster for the next half decade. Wow! Except it’s not really like that is it?

Most of the parliamentary constituencies in Britain remain stubbornly either red or blue, with occasional patches of yellow and a small but increasing number of other colours threatening to make inroads.

Though the political landscape of the UK may change in May 2015, we are certainly not yet living in a rainbow democracy.

We are not the only ones. The voting patterns seem to be even more ossified in the USA, where the outcomes of elections are determined by an ever-diminishing number of “swing states”, and the winning margins in a country of close to 300 million people can be whittled down to a few tens of thousands. That’s democracy for you… The power of voting is not new.

The values that underpin our liberal western democratic society are derived, at least in part, from the Roman Republic and the Athenian City State before that; free and fair elections, the ability of citizens to take part in and influence civic life, the protection of fundamental human rights and the rule of law.

In England, the Magna Carta casts a long shadow too, and I am writing this on Democracy Day, 750 years exactly from the date of the first English Parliament convened by Simon de Montfort.

Debates held marking the event at Westminster will focus the mind on contemporary issues – cultural identity, technology and the philosophy of democracy for the modern age. Sounds high-flown? Well it’s not. This is stuff that affects us all and, of course, in many countries the debates would not be possible (let alone the voting).

Research suggests that nearly half the world’s population live in countries that have no real democratic rights. That is something that will certainly focus my mind as I post my ballot paper into the box in May.

Dr Stuart Smallwood