I AM all for the democracy but there is a feeling some local elections results are a foregone conclusion.

For instance, and this is no disrespect to any candidates, must we go through the process for the sake of…well…going through the process? A friend of mine suggested we could save ourselves a whole load of time and money by just announcing the result ahead of the vote.

We know who will win and we also know the margin by which that victory will be.

We even know what the turn out is likely to be.

Election time, and especially local election time is a wonderful time of the year. I actually find the whole process enlightening. The door-to-door canvassing, the strange WhatsApp videos and the election leaflets helps keep some of us occupied.

But is the result becoming far too predictable in some wards?

One candidate is guaranteed to get 1,500 votes and the other is likely to receive a maximum of 400. In some cases you may have someone topping 2,000 votes. Anyone who thinks otherwise can check the records for the past twenty years.

Some might say there is always a chance of an upset. But this isn’t really like an FA Cup third round match though is it? A Premier League club may be beaten by a non-league club because football unlike politics, is all about how well 11 people perform on a pitch for 90 minutes. Before anyone thinks I am trying to belittle the whole election process – I am not. There has got to be a way of saving us all a bit of time and effort and making all our lives a little less cumbersome.

I recall the days when there was a real battle in some wards and people would be waiting until the wee hours of the morning to find out if the winner would be a Labour candidate or a Liberal Democrat.

How some of us long for that moment at 2am when the presiding officer decides to have a re-count.

It therefore says a lot about how poor the opposition is performing. I do think it is really brave putting your name forward in some wards when there is very little chance of polling more than a few hundred votes.

Maybe the real reward should go to those people who are making sure there is an election to be had. They have got to be the real winners.