Time to mandate voting?
With everyone banging on about their rights, might it be time to include the associated responsibilities?
Force people to vote (preferably using a paper ballot) and include a "none of the above" box on the form. This would allow people to express their justified boredom with the same ol', same ol'. It may be impotent frustration initially, but when the political elite are forced to acknowledge the scale of the problem of voter apathy through such a scheme, the excuses will be whittled down.
It's possible that the motivation behind some of the initiatives is about trying to re-engage people (i.e. greater postal voting / e-voting), but the execution of these plans has been diabolical at best and brought shame to one of the oldest democracies in the world ("A farce worthy of a banana republic" according to the judge in the Birmingham postal vote fraud).
Of course, there's every chance that the mindless, latté-sipping drifters of our celebrity-obsessed consumer society will continue with their "am I bovvered " approach to this. What else can we do to (metaphorically) put a rocket up their ar$e and get them interested in something that really does affect them on a daily basis? Too many lives have been lost defending our freedom to allow these poorly schooled morons to perpetuate their special brand of laisse-faire cretinism.
Actually, this also ties in nicely with a previous post of mine ("Technology for technology's sake"). All this extra expense and it still doesn't work! Remember that story about the Yanks spending $millions developing a pen that would write in space? The Russians saved a few bob by taking a pencil instead.