There is less than a week to go before we exercise our most basic democratic right. Ex-pats have already made their mark and the IEC’s new high-tech results operation centre is officially open. But who to vote for?

If you are still clueless then you’re not alone. Zuma seems to inspire either fear or suspicion in many, Helen Zille has taken to out-of-step “toi-toiing”, Patricia De Lille appears to be all mouth and well there are so many others there must be something wrong with them as well.

The obvious solution, since we vote for parties and not people in SA, is to vote according to policy. Who has the time, or will power, to wade through all those manifestos though?

The trick is to go online. Following the lead of various US sites covering elections, the Mail & Guardian has launched an interactive quiz that is designed to discover where you actually stand on some of the more pressing election issues. After completing eleven fairly straightforward questions their Poll Predictor graphically indicates which party’s policies best meet your own opinion on the big issues.

While this probably isn’t the best means of deciding which party to vote for it beats going eeny, meeny, miny, moe with your ballot in front of you.