HERE it is, voters . . . you’ve never had it so good. That’s a somewhat rosy and optimistic view of the situation, for sure, but I reckon it stands up for the following reason.

I’ve never known a list of Senatorial candidates that offers such a broad number of options. That’s not a fantastic endorsement — I’ve only really known the line-ups from 2002 and 2005 — but the 21 candidates, who even now are yearning, itching and burning for you to draw bisecting diagonal lines adjacent to their names between the hours of 8 am and 8 pm on Wednesday, offer a genuine choice.

You could go green. You could go left. You could go right. You could go for reform. You could stick with what you know. You could go for change. The world, you may say, is your ormer.

And the quality of the field is good too. Most of the candidat-es can string a pretty good sentence together, and almost all of them are pretty well-researched on the big issues. Some of them even have a few concrete ideas on how to sort them out.

That’s not to say that the Senatorial sys-tem is perfect, or a shimmering example of everything which is good about democracy. It’s not. Almost everything about it sucks.

The six-year term is far too long, and the choice of six votes favours the middle-of-the-road and the familiar, and the hustings meetings don’t really do an awful lot to help voters make informed choices.

But that’s an argument for another day (another day which might be coming up pretty soon, but more on that later).

The point is this: for 12 hours on Wednesday, everything turns on its head. Instead of Them deciding how you’ll be taxed and where the houses are going to be built, or looking after your job and making sure you’ll be OK if things go wrong for you — you’re in charge. Even if it’s just for 12 hours, use it and enjoy it.

And if you didn’t get registered in time, get in touch with your parish hall and get on the roll in time for round two with the Deputies. The Senatorial elections might grab the attention a bit more, but there are only six seats up for grabs. The Deputy elections cover almost five times as many — and the Deputies, don’t forget, are the ones who pretty much have to help you out if you phone them up. And you can expect to see some of the 15 candidates who don’t find a home on the Senatorial bench lining up again in a month’s time.

The thundering hooves of a cavalry charge, a terse invitation to join your boss in his office, a long put-off appointment with the dentist, the red dot of a laser sight dancing between your eyes . . . all of these things pale into insignificance next to the scariest prospect that your columnist knows.

I’d rather be trampled underfoot, fired, tortured with a drill and shot in the face than go through another States reform debate. But it looks as though that’s where we’re headed — every one of the Senatorial candidates having backed some level of reform on the hustings trail over the last few weeks. On past performance, you should brace yourselves for a brutal series of consultation exercises and States debates — without a whole lot to show for it.

I’ve been asked to correct last week’s column, in which I reported that Senator Terry Le Sueur had fled a shop after being buttonholed by a lady about GST. Although my information came from usually accurate sources, the Senator assures me that it never happened, in the light of which I can only offer my apology for any embarrassment.