As my small daughter sobbed unceremoniously at the kitchen table because her dance class in the village hall had been cancelled, I tried unsuccessfully to explain why.

“We have to vote for who will run the local police and the voting is taking place in the village hall,” I told her.

“Why?” my son asked as he rifled through the bread bin on a mission to find and eat as many carbs as possible before supper.

“I have no idea,” was the answer.

“But why do they think you will know who’s best for the job?” he persisted. “Because surely the police are in the best position to choose the right person and they alone know who’s who.” You’d think so wouldn’t you.

“So why are they asking you to vote?.”

It’s a good point, and I didn’t have the answer. But if a teenager could see the futility of it all, the message is pretty loud and clear and begs the question why. And what’s the answer? Is it the candidate with the best leaflet, whoever doorsteps our house (no one), or the best smiley picture in the electoral bumph? Because who knows what’s most important? Not us, but them.

So why put us through such a ridiculous rigmarole when we plainly have no idea what we are doing? What a waste of taxpayers money (I’ve always wanted to say that, along with ‘follow that car’ and ‘there’s only room for one sheriff in this town’).

It’s so hideously bureaucratic and smothered in red tape that there can be no fair outcome. And sneers that apathy will rule and we won’t turn out to vote shouldn’t be a criticism of us, but of them. It’s not apathy, it’s disbelief. How can we when we don’t know why or how? I’m more afraid of ticking the wrong box than the right one because I don’t trust myself to make a comprehensive decision.

And more than that. Haven’t the police got enough to do without having to get the entire county on board? With cuts and budgets to consider, why have we spent money on this instead of finding the crook who made off with my bike? Isn’t this about politics rather than law enforcement?

So I voted with my feet by joining my daughter at the kitchen table and staying there.

The next morning, a colleague came into work fuming. He’d had to take a day off work because his daughter’s school was being used as a polling station. So not only was the poll wasting our down time, but also encroaching into our working days.

But I still don’t have an answer for my disconsolate daughter. Because asking us to choose the next police commissioner is like asking the general public to vote for our next editor, or the next prime minister. Ahhh...