Come the next general election, as a willing and curious voter, who will you want to hear from as you make up your mind?

Not from the political parties, surely, with their manifestoes which have a dubious likelihood of being delivered at the best of times, but will be particularly readily horse-traded in the event of another hung parliament?

Perhaps from the champions of industry? Ineos say, which seems to have just got away with holding the UK to ransom. Or the power companies, which somehow contrive to raise prices in herd-like coordination, though of course they are not a cartel.

Perhaps you'd rather hear from the victims of the gradual dismantling of our welfare state, and those on the sharp end of the austerity measures meted out by central and local government. I certainly would.

I'd like to hear from those people, and from the charities that routinely stick up for the marginalised and disenfranchised. I'd like to hear from voluntary organisations up and down Britain which have stepped, often very reluctantly, into the breach as services and supports are withdrawn.

The Trussell Trust, which provides food parcels to families who can demonstrate that without them they would not eat. The charities such as Includem, Action for Children and Aberlour, which deliver services for young offenders on behalf of the state. The disability charities whose role has shifted towards helping carers and service users whose income has been hit by benefit cut-backs and the bedroom tax. Community groups fighting fuel poverty.

You might have other preferences. Worried about wind farms? I'm not, particularly, but if you are, you might want to hear from the Countryside Alliance. You might want to know what the churches feel about increasing secularism, or what the Secular Society thinks about removing religion from our schools. At a push, you might want to hear the dubious perspective of the so-called TaxPayers' Alliance.

How easy will that be? Not as easy as you might hope, if the lobbying bill has the suffocating effect many people in the charity world fear. The second part of the bill widens the scope of activities that will now count as campaigning and reduces the amount charities can spend before they have to register with the electoral commission. In Scotland this unnecessary bureaucratic burden could affect charities who spend as little as £2000. The Coalition Government has defended the bill and says charities are not intended to be affected. They have accused third sector leaders of leading an 'overreaction' to the broad wording and apparently rushed nature of the legislation.

Others disagree, including many in the second house. Passed in the House of Commons, the bill was this week savaged in the House of Lords, where only three peers supported it out of 40 who spoke.

Representative was Lord Harries of Pentregarth, who said: "There are those who resent the role now played by charities in our society. Some apparently would like to confine them to service provision, leaving political policy to politicians."

The role in service provision is what makes the voice of many charities particularly important. Is the drift into irrelevancy of David Cameron's Big Society vision among the reasons why the Coalition Government is so unwilling to accept amendments which would exclude charities from its reach? Some in the sector feel this is not the conspiracy theory it seems.

Lord Wallace of Saltaire is the man responsible for steering the bill through the Lords. The former Scottish deputy first minister said: "The charity sector perceives this as an attack... This is, by and large, a mistaken perception".

But attacks, in my experience, are by and large, attacks. It's not a noun that's terribly ambiguous, so this is hardly reassuring.

Fewer people are willing to engage with party politics. But they are interested in issue-based, charity-led and online campaigns likely to be frozen out by the bill.

The sector will hit back this week with a Commission on Civil Society, which will further explain its concerns. The objections aren't going away, but are so far going unheard by politicians.