Lance Haward 
V.O.T.E. 

V.O.T.E. is set in the not-too-distant future but in a radically changed political landscape in which, under presently existing law, a private company – Voice Of The Electorate – has evolved into the de facto power controlling parliament and its legislative programme. The struggle between an over-powerful chairman of V.O.T.E. and the only remaining ‘independent’ member of the Commons, leader of the traditionalist Westminster Movement, in its attempt to unpick this massive confidence trick and restore democracy, becomes a desperate once-for-all gamble in the run-up to the first meaningful general election in fifty years, in which more than one life is lost. The campaign unfolds against the background of a United Kingdom in which the National Lottery has been replaced by something much closer to the games of ancient Rome, and when the central character, V.O.T.E.’s home secretary designate but now in revolt against it, finds himself forcibly conscripted into the arena, it is only the merest accident of an earlier and violent encounter in the street which comes to his rescue in the fight for life.