Is there a Euro election going on?

It has just struck us (that's the husband and me) that there is a big Euro election taking place on 4 June, but so far we have had nothing through the door telling us who the candidates might be, or urging us to vote in any particular direction.

We have had some stuff about the local county council elections, just from the BNP and the Lib Dems (for whom I shall be voting). Though I'd rather move further to the left, the LD's have been good in Cambridge, and the sitting MP is not only a friend, but has very modest expenses. Maybe our LD poster has put off the other parties from knocking on the door (but it can hardly have put them off sending their literature through the mail -- so much for local democracy).

But on the Euro front, we have had NOTHING from anyone.

For the last few years, we have had a marital pact on Euro elections: that is, spoiling our ballot papers. We are both more or less solidly behind the Euro-project, but cannot abide the party-list system of voting. If you want, for example, to vote for someone at number three on the party list, but not for the person at number two (whom you distrust for various good reasons) -- well, you can't. That's no good or responsible election, if you ask me (and the recent investigations of parliamentary probity have rather proved us right, I think).

But this year we thought we might get down off our high horses, and we just needed a bit of information. So far, with just ten days to go, we have had none from any candidate or party.

I've gone to some websites and discovered that there are almost 100 candidates for 7 places in my district in the European parliament. If I am to be a responsible voter, I should by now have some idea who these people are and what they stand for (is Libertas-EU a good thing, or UKIP by another name and a human face -- it's a bit hard to tell from the website?).

If no literature comes through the door very soon, I'll have no choice but to spoil the ballot paper again.