How do you vote when you have little or nothing to lose?
Whose message do you choose to hear, when you feel no one has been listening to you?
Mags Macdonald has lost a good deal over the past decade. She was working as a medical secretary when she was diagnosed with an acute psychiatric disorder. She had to give up her job and her two sons were taken into care. She now relies on government benefits, living on about 150 pounds a week (about $250) in a two bedroom apartment in Merkinch, Inverness, one of the most deprived areas in Scotland.
Having wavered on the issue of Scottish independence in the past, she is now a resolute, almost evangelical Yes voter. The key decider: The so-called Bedroom Tax -- and the Yes campaign's promise to scrap it.
The controversial Bedroom Tax, known officially as the “under occupancy tax,” affects those of working age who live in social housing with one or more spare bedrooms. Under this welfare reform introduced last year, claimants can lose as much as 25% of their housing benefits, if they have a spare bedroom, fueling an argument that it punishes those who already have little.
But here's the thing: in Scotland, the government has already been given powers to, in effect, pay the charge for tenants like Mags. Under other coalition government reforms, Mags may in fact end up a little better off than she is now.
So why is she so determined to vote Yes on Sept. 18?
What is clear from talking to her, and many like her, is that this vote is visceral and emotional. It is as much -- if not more -- about rage at the government in Westminster which, when it comes to welfare reforms, is often criticized for offering a form of punishment rather than practical help.
Describing the system as "barbaric," Mags says it paints everyone as scroungers and skivers. "It makes me feel like a second-hand citizen," she tells me. "There's more of an element of hatred for people like us on benefit, as if we're taking the money for ourselves, and we 're living the high life -- big holidays, drinking, drugs...that we don't want to work, and that we're just settled in, receiving money."
What plays well with many who receive government benefits here is the Yes campaign's vow of fairness -- a word that is peppered throughout the Scottish government's White Paper, outlining the argument for independence.
The White Paper is a bonanza of promises that include tax credits, extra childcare, more protection of pensions and for government benefits to increase in line with inflation.
While it has raised serious questions about how this will all be paid for -- questions not just from critics but from independent economic analysts, too -- for people like Mags it offers a vision of Scotland that is very appealing.
The No camp say that that's all it is -- a vision, a mirage. "Well, the sun will shine every day under Alex Salmond's world," said Mary Scanlon, a Tory Member of Scottish Parliament, out on the campaign trail in Inverness. "The truth is there's not a penny more for people on benefits."
But they concede that fairness has been a powerful message to a group of people who feel they're at the bottom of the pile; who feel that, whatever reservations they hold, they might as well vote Yes, since things can hardly get any worse.
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