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Web-Based Assistant Changes the Face of Dutch Politics
An anonymous reader writes "The elections held in The Netherlands on Wednesday have shaken the country. Almost 10 million votes were cast, and statistics show that a full half of those who voted used a popular web-based voter guide. This guide is operated by the independent institute for the public and politics. Advice is given to the visitor upon answering a number of multiple choice questions on some common political topics. Statistically, a number of people ended up scoring in support of populist parties both on the far left and far right. No bias was reported to exist in the test itself. However, these parties have ended up with an unforeseen amount of power as a result of the election. The voter participation was high, and the web-based advisories may have motivated people with little interest in politics to cast a vote anyway. Can politics be simplified to a ten minute test?"
and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.
Seriously, the way it works is just pure propaganda. It reduces choices to black or white.
Im curious as to the actual merit of this idea - what about different IP addresses, email addresses, etc.
-Red
Guns don't kill people, "with glowing hearts" kills people.
The stomwijzer (stupidguide instead of voteguide) is a nice parody.
In the U.S., it's much simpler. Just vote for the lesser of two evils. Not that they'll count your vote properly, anyway.
It should be noted that this voting aid is endorsed by all major political parties who actually submit questions to it. The party leaders are also the first to take the test (this time the liberal leader actually did not end up with his own party at all after doing it...bummer :(
In the end you can compare your answer to the one of each political party. There they argue why they give this answer, making it a rather nice tool to learn more about the programs without reading the entire manuscripts, but it is definitely more then just the 30 questions.
Another interesting thing is that there is no large correlation between the suggested votes and those actually casted, indicating that people do not follow the advise blindly. In reality, many people here try a number of these web-based aids (kieskompas.nl is another one).
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
Does anybody actually believe that before there were 10-minute web-based tests, everybody used to go out and read all the different parties' complete programs and base their decision on a comprehensive analysis of them all? Ofcourse not, people used to base it on soundbytes and whether someone appears to be trustworthy. So from that perspective, using a 10-minute test to base your choice on some actually relevant political issues is a great step forward.
And you want to emulate the Netherlands? right.
I tried Stemwijzer, but the questions where too simple with only yes and no as possible answers.
I tried Kieskompas.nl and they had better questions, followup questions and at the end you could compare your "score" with that of the political parties that answered the same questions accompanied by extra explanations and motivations to give you a better idea about their standing on the subjects.
That was a better website to "quickly" get informed.
This is the sig that says NI (again)
If it opens people's eyes to parties outside the usual two, I'm in favor of it. Play with the OkCupid politics test if you haven't already. It's run by the same mathematicians who designed TheSpark way back when, and features the same scarily-insightful ratings engine.
Surely if politics can be simplified into ten second soundbites and mud slinging ads repeated over and over again, it can be simplified to a ten minute test.
In fact ten minute test sound heck of a lot better than "tough on terrorism" and "tough on drugs" as a basis for a vote.
Well of course the people needed _some_ sort of guide/test/assistance, there were over a billion different parties to choose from (well, only 20, but you get the idea)
A short test is less than ideal, but it's better than a blind vote. (although not voting would be better of course...)
Yes. In fact, I can cut it down to 30 seconds:
1. Are you with
A. America
B. the terrorists
If you marked 'A', please vote for everyone with the word 'Republican' under their name. If you marked 'B', please stay put while we pinpoint your exact location...
Here are the 30 topics, each of which you are asked to 'agree' with or 'disagree' with.
WANRING: This warning is misspelt.
The same happened to me; As a dutch voter I also tried out the 'Stemwijzer', and encountered a very strange advice of what to vote for, namely the 'Partij voor de Dieren' ; or 'Party for Animals', a leftish party who is fighting for more animal rights, but has not too much opinions on stuff that -also- matters.
The strange thing though; Second on the advice was 'EénNL' ; Or One NL , a party who is very much leaning to the right.
Other friends of mine also got very strange advices (ranging from hardcore religious to far-right parties), and while we could see that the tool was clearly unbalanced (either by asking the wrong questions, or by having some weird measurement being used) and its results should be taken with a grain of salt, we were worried for others who would take this advice regardless.
The end-result, where both extreme-left as extreme right had a victory, might have had some of its origin in the advice dealt out by this site.
Then again, relying on twenty one-liners to determine a final vote is not really that good a thing in the first place.
Well, this election in the Netherlands some people concerned with the abovementioned effect (viz. a newspaper and a university) have created http://www4.kieskompas.nl/a competing site(unfortunately no english verions available) which wanted to provide a more graduated result. Hell, there was even http://www.partijwijzer.nl/a similar website(currently offline for obvious reasons, i.e. elections are over) aimed at younger (age < 30) voters.
As long as there are more than one what-should-I-vote websites and most people visit several, I don't see the problem.
- Should the government aid farmers, letting them survive the flood of imported goods?
- Would you want to pay extra taxes to grant benefits to the most incompetent of farmers?
It's all about who gets to edit the questions...The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Maybe voting on issues isn't a good way of voting in a democracy. But that's what we believe democracy is currently about and that's a good place to start from if we want to improve it.
A danger with voting guides, however, is that the question and terminology are vague. "Spending less on defense" can mean anything from a 1% reduction in the budget to getting rid of the military.
In any case, nobody is stopping people from using common sense together with these voting guides. If you find that your positions agree most with some disreputable party, you can use that as a starting point for re-evaluating your positions and for re-evaluating that party; you don't have to vote for them blindly.
What if there had been bias on the test in favour of on or another far left, or worse, far right political party? It is surprising that there is so much trust and popularity in a simple web-based system in the first place. However one must doubt that anyone in their right mind would make an important political decision based on this alone. Say that hypothetically, the management of the system fell into the hands of a neo-nazi sympatizer? Would the Dutch (as...unorthodox shall we say, as they are) really have elected a greater proportion of Nazis to parliament?
More interesting (and a bit scary) is that the SP, which started as a maoistic party in 1971, received 17% of the votes. They had 6% of the votes in 2003. Although they claim to be a a more socialistic at this time, it still is the farthest left in dutch politics.
That would be funny ... if this(only those 2 choices) wouldn't be the worldview of many republicans.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
I went and voted wednesday, but my interrest in politics make unnessesary to rely on a tool like this. How ever, i did fill it out and it had the good direction. In the netherlands, the biggest party got only 27% of the votes, the other partys are even smaller. I think the more partys the better, because more different viewpoints can be assessed. I cant see how in the states only two political partys can really represent so many different opinions. this election the house gained 2 new partys but only lost 1. We proove that different political partys can work together to form a good, more internally balanced, government. Looking for a 3 party solution, because biggest 2 together make only 48%
Living as we do in the information age, there's clearly a lot more that can be done with voting than we're doing at the moment.
For example, we could have 'continuous voting'. Everybody who is eligible to vote can log into a website at any time, on any day of the year, and change their standing vote. Every day the totals and trends are made public, and a sufficient shift in opinion changes who is in power. (With some buffering, obviously -- e.g. you need a majority of 60% for six months to cause a switch, but a majority of 80% will cause power to change hands in a month).
Instead of voting on parties, why not vote on issues? Then let the parties declare their positions on each issue, and match the one to the other.
I'm not saying these would work better than current systems, necessarily -- but think of the possibilities! Of course there's vast scope for broken systems that lead to bad things happening... but then, that's nothing new.
I'd rather answer 10 or 100 questions on my opinions and have them fed directly into the policymaking than have to choose between two major parties, one incompetent and the other dishonest.
Subject line says it all.
I do not have the impression that people actually take it as an advice. There are now so many "stemwijzers" online with so many different systems and outcomes that people do not take them too serious.
The best thing about the "stemwijzers" is that they get a discussion going about the programmes of the different political parties and that they might point you to possibilities you hadn't really considered. After all, there are so many parties to choose from here in the Netherlands!
Ok, you are totaly right: I never made the effort to read any of those propaganda fliers. I only got those for two parties so that was what my choices were limited to. The choice was not that hard: one had a bald man on front, the other a nice woman of my agegroup (the only downside of her is that she had her hair cut when she got kids...)
Actually, i could have voted for the first foreign sounding female on their list (AKA the 'troetelturk'[toyforeigner]) but these don't show pictures. So I am just happy i voted for a hot woman (that shared a lot of my political ideas, but I did not learn that from their propaganda)
BTW: the bald man party made huge victory, from 9 to ~26 seat (out of 150), so he didn't need my vote anyway. Too bad bald man and hot chick can't go make a gouvernment, maye with the help of harry potter(who lost some seats) and the ideal son in law (who lost more seats).
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
As long as the test can be/remain un-biased and can't be manipulated by the major parties, this has got to be the best idea for a voter-aid in a long time. To encourage voting (where it's not compulsary), make suggestions that don't necessarily revolve around two parties, and be seen to be neutral by the general public would make this an important tool to say the least.
Hi! It looks like you're voting for a right-wing party! This time it's the Muslims who are being used to distract you from the decreasing quality of your life, increased bills, inflation, house prices, etc. Would you like to see the Muslims:
1) Humiliated?
2) Repatriated?
3) Gassed?
The IPP got a fair sum of government funding to develop the StemWijzer, too.
I think, however, the high number of votes for the extremist, populist parties is more because those were the only ones with a real agenda, for example animal rights or integration.
BTW, http://www.stomwijzer.nl/ is even simpler, and a lot funnier.
So an infusion of ten minutes' worth of information caused a shift away from the political middle.
And you are surprised by this?
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
I think these tools are useful. There are not many people who read the full election programmes. Some of them are 106 pages!
Suppose you're an average informed voter and you're planning to vote for party A.
You take the tests at stemwijzer and kieskompas, and then you find out that you that you don't agree with a lot of the party's views. That gives you something to think about right? I think these tests stimulate people to think more about the views held by various political parties.
Voters end up more informed after using them, how is that bad?
Personally I already knew which party i was going to vote on before i used both sites: party X.
Remarkably the results from both sites were right on, both showed that i had very high similarity with party X
BTW, i think the headline is way off, "Web-Based Assistant Changes the Face of Dutch Politics" is a gross exaggeration.
Sure, there will always be group of people who base their vote solely on the tests, and that is regrettable, but i really don't think that it had much influence on the outcome of this election.
You proposal (referenda for everything) would seriously hamper budgetting, as most people choose for more money for [insert favourite employee group here]. It would give responsibility to a lot of people without making them really responsible. If you have a minister that goes over budget, he has to come and explain in parliament. voters can't. They would not have all the information to make desicions anyway, and even if they had, you can't expect them to research it all for one vote only. That is what we pay politicians for. Not every choice is a simple and purely ethical as ruining a kid and mothers life vs killing an embryo.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
I think blaming the online test for the polarisation in Dutch politics is a bit short-sighted.
As some commentators remarked (for our Dutch readers, Rob Oudkerk among them), and consistent with what I hear around me, it is the waffling and trying to be everyone's friend of the centrist parties that drove voters to vote for politician that were actually willing to stand up for their beliefs.
A nice example is the centre-left PvdA (Labour party) waffling on the Armenian genocide. At first they were willing to go along with a hard line pushed by the (centre-)right that requiring a positive affirmation of the genocide by Turkish-descended politicians was a good idea, and when Turkish organisations made it abundantly clear that that would cost votes, the head honcho suddenly started waffling about whether or not the genocide would qualify as a genocide per se.
Disclosure: I voted for the definitely left-wing Socialist Party, so my view of Labour's waffling may be a bit biased.
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Or try the Zweefwijzer
http://www.burorenkema.nl/2006/11/zweefwijzer.php
Statistically, a number of people ended up scoring in support of populist parties both on the far left and far right.
What odes that mean? Any ideas? I am assuming they are trying to point out that it was possible to choose any (or the major) parties using this. But what does statistically mean in this context.
I suppose the good this about this was that it didn't get the "pedophile party" a seat (yes... there really is such a party)
:(){
While the original post puts forward a most interesting question, the subject of the post is misleading. Post fails to prove that the online voting tool http://www.stemwijzer.nl/ changed the face of Dutch politics.
Stemwijzer is a very useful tool, in that it's purpose is to narrow down which party principles match your own. It helps voters to choose a party by simply matching the 30 answers of the voter with the answers of the participating parties. It then not only shows what party matches your answers the best, but also gives a comparison between your answers and the answers of every other party upon request. It also points to the party program documents of every party.
Most Dutch I know (and being dutch, I know a few...) only used stemwijzer to check if their mental picture (of the party program of their choice) matched the actual program.
To answer the original question: politics can't (and shouldn't) be simplified to a 10 minute test, but a 10 minute test is a great way to get to know 'the field' in a multi party democracy. That, and reading newspapers, watching political TV shows, discussions with friends/relatives/complete strangers and reading all the party programs...
To clarify the subject: the face of Dutch politics was changed because of the political move from center-right to center-left and a 9-seat 'loss of sanity' by the Dutch voters (out of 150 seats in the 'Tweede Kamer' (Dutch house of commons))
If only to weed out the gunnuts and other looniebin characters. Give 'em some toys to play with and some ways to retreat themselves from the genepool and it makes out society a bit nicer. Just make sure the headloony does not declare war on you.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
IIRC, we (the dutch) have had the 'stemwijzer' for at least the last couple of elections. I think at least eight years now (paars 2, balkenende 1, 2 and 3), and it hasn't hit the news until today? I know slashdot can be a bit slow, but eight years?
Most major parties have platforms that are compromises which only tend toward an ideological position. Many individuals have organized political beliefs; the consistency of those beliefs results in a net political position characterized as "extreme". When a questionaire distills those organized beliefs, they'll match up with parties that also have coherent beliefs, and those parties are on the fringe.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
The web based assistant (Stemwijzer.nl) has been around for some time. But with these elections, the different party's opinions were limited to the active discussion in the Netherlands. Example: You are an atheist, but Stemwijzer.nl says you should vote for some Christian party because they have the same opinion as you do. The only problem here is that this Christian party ALSO has an opinion about abortian, drug policy etc... that you do NOT agree with. But Stemwijzer.nl only shows the active discussions in NL, so this opinion isn't included in the advice. I believe that that is the reason why so many people got weird results. I know I did. But I didn't act on it! But somehow I think that many other people did.
Yup.
I don't care why you're posting AC
For the non Dutch speakers among us (and mine is somewhat rusty, I always found http://www.politicalcompass.org/ to come up with interesting results. Although it doesn't tell you who you could vote for, it's fun for kicking off political debates!
How about you just ask "Should the government supply financial aid to farmers?"
Your examples attempt to provide advice in the question, which there is no reason for. Just simplify the question down to the core of what is being asked, and ensure that there is no bias. Presumably if these questions are checked by the political parties beforehand, they would have a period to complain about any bias that slips through.
And in the netherlands we have democracy in which seats of parliament are devided by percentage of votes (unlike the american "winner takes all" approach )
This means that we have dozens of parties competing per election.
Now all of them have their own ideas and standpoints, and having to read all their party programs is tedious and boring.
Seeing as most people are more interested in soccer matches than politics the "stemwijzer" is a very good way in finding out which party represents your view. I consider it to be a great aid in democracy as voters make more INFORMED choices regarding who to vote for.
(On a sidenote, I voted sp and I didn't need no stinkin "stemwijzer" to decide that, but then again I'm a political geek)
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
Today's politics can be summed up in 10 minutes. More and more people want to deal less and less with politics, thus politicians have to offer simple, 'in a nutshell' solutions for complex problems. If they can't, people get bored with them, don't listen to them and don't vote for them. They need to offer popular, easily understood slogans instead of elaborate, through discussions and plans.
That can easily be summed up in 10 minutes.
I also don't attribute the success of the radical parties to the online voting 'helper'. Rather I blame the general disappointment with politicians and, again, the need for popular, striking slogans. People want everything, and they want it now. Compromises are a thing of the past. They don't listen to both sides and try to find a middle way, instead they want their way, their vision (or, more often, a vision of someone else that appeals to them), without any regard or consideration for others. Radical, populistic parties offer that more easily than centric mass parties who have to try to appeal to as many people as possible, and thus cannot take a radical stance.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
About as good as the Democrat's test which would go something like
Are you
A. A Democrat
B. A Facist
The fact that you're both enough of a tool to be fooled by party politics and that you are probably able to vote frightens me.
Exactly. We're not satisfied with "only" 57 varieties of hamburger condiments, but for political parties we're supposed to be satisfied with laws which wildly tilt the playing field forcing us to choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
:-/
And they call that "freedom"...
Politics is changing. Liberal democracy has not worked. People want solutions, and what we call "far right" and "far left" today are closer than you might think. There's only one clear answer -- environmentalist, conservationist, culture-enhancing National Socialism. At least until the Chinese invade and global warming dooms us. Humanity made some bad decisions, and now our run is over. Maybe the amphibians will do better.
I'm not surprised that a test such as this would have resulted in a shift towards the extremes. Major politics parties are the result of a concensus of a large subsection of society, as a result they must be fairly moderate since extreme views would alienate large portions of their base who do not share those views.
But individual people, who don't have to appease a lot of people or make well thought out defences of their views, will have a set of views that would be considered quite outside the mainstream. Normally they still vote for a mainstream moderate party due to advertising and popular support, but when something like this test actually confronts them with the fact that a party does exist that holds close to their views then they're more likely to shift support.
Also note that the test didn't cover things such as experience or credibility.
Overall I think tests like this will be a good thing for politics, it exposes the fact that most people are extremists/outside the mainstream and it forces society to confront these ideas. Some will turn out to be good, others will be exposed to be poorly thought out and lose credibility.
I stole this Sig
I would love to have this in US.
Not the web based voting guide . . . parties to choose from. Where governments are actually representative of the people rather than the lesser of two evils. Sure the president would be one of the two major parties . . . however, the deadlock in congress would be great. None with a majority . . . that would be awesome. No, new laws. Most of the dumb laws all have sunset provisions on them such as NCLB, patriot act, and whole bunch more would just go bye-bye.
Someone mentioned the http://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection I like this one thing it acuratly shows is the two dominat parties are both right (which I am) and authtorian. Of course they are. How would they not be.
After reading this I am going to have to check out http://www.badnarik.org/
-- A computer without Windoze is like a choclate cake without mustard
I think the recommender is a good idea, it wipes away the personality politics and tells you which parties have beliefs are closest to your own. You should probably go confirm any recommendation against the party manifesto.
However it really doesn't matter if your electoral system collapses any voting result to a two party state. Or if you can form a majority government with the support of just 36% of the population.
Deleted
You go through a load of questions to get it down to a finely weighted and nuanced picture of your political beliefs... Then... It collapses the answer down to either you are a democrat or you are a republican...
Which kind of points out how fucked up the electoral system is.
Oooh they've improved it, now I come up Libertarian, which means Liberal in the real world.
Deleted
Our national political parties are prohibited from enforcing party platforms, because almost every U.S. state requires nomination by primary election. One of the reasons this was done originally was to limit the ability of immigrants and the urban poor from using the right of association effectively in politics. Later the concept was extended to most state ballot access laws.
Quote from 1927
Here in the last generation, a development has taken place which finds an analogy nowhere else. American parties have ceased to be voluntary associations like trade unions or the good government clubs or the churches. They have lost the right freely to determine how candidates shall be nominated and platforms framed, even who shall belong to the party and who shall lead it. The state legislatures have regulated their structure and functions in great detail.
Page 174 American Parties and Elections, pub 1927 by Edward Sait
Not only are we a two-party system, we are really a two-fake-party system!
A political party in a two-party system is a gigantic coalition of many different interests. Lacking an enforceable party platform, the other forces that decide which of these interests will get rewarded after the votes are counted are not very clear in either major party.
I think blaming the online test for the polarisation in Dutch politics is a bit short-sighted.
As some commentators remarked (for our Dutch readers, Rob Oudkerk among them), and consistent with what I hear around me, it is the waffling and trying to be everyone's friend of the centrist parties that drove voters to vote for politician that were actually willing to stand up for their beliefs.
A nice example is the centre-left PvdA (Labour party) waffling on the Armenian genocide. At first they were willing to go along with a hard line pushed by the (centre-)right that requiring a positive affirmation of the genocide by Turkish-descended politicians was a good idea, and when Turkish organisations made it abundantly clear that that would cost votes, the head honcho suddenly started waffling about whether or not the genocide would qualify as a genocide per se.
Disclosure: I voted for the definitely left-wing Socialist Party, so my view of Labour's waffling may be a bit biased.
TSP
How about a link to these statistics? I'd like to see how it was determined that "a full half of those that voted" were influenced by web-based guides.
The best argument in my view for proportional voting is that it at least gives more dimensions to the political compass. One dimension is very poor.
Here you can distinguish right-left, individualist-collectivist, conservative-progressive, nationalist-internationalist, religious-secular. A left, collectivist, conservative, internationalist, religious person could for instance vote CU (a winner), a left, collectivist, conservative, nationalist, secular person instance vote SP (the biggest winner), a right, individualist, conservative, internationalist, secular person for instance VVD (a big loser), etc. It doesn't help against demonization of the others, though. The aforementioned two for instance probably cannot exist in one coalition, even though they are compatible in social-economic policy.
"Web-Based Assistant Changes the Face of Dutch Politics"
In Soviet Russia, politics changes your face! (In Ukraine too I hear).
In USA the "Voting Assistant" changes the votes of US citizens.
Or should I say the tools "help" the tools vote for more tools.
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deliberative_democrac y
Idea is: Add a fourth branch of government who replaces the presidential/gubernatorial veto with a "jury trial" by 100ish citizens. Each legislative faction could send advocates who'd make their case. If the jury vetos the law, the legislature can always try again later, but not immediately.
Point is: Researchers have found that citizens make better decissions on a jury then when voting.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
The problem is that candidates don't feel the need to fill it out. They may get a little bit of bad publicity for not participating, but that's better for them than being pinned-down on where they stand on the issues. (See this article Politicians Grow Wary Of Survey as Internet Spreads Attack Ads on the topic from 10/25/26 issue of the Wall Street Journal).
Disclaimer: I used to work for Project Vote Smart about 10 years ago.
I also get very strange results when I do the test.
I think that this is because most people do the first part of the test. Only the agree/disagree part. Instead it might have been better to have something like the following:
Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Disagree Not
strongly strongly important
That way people will have a more direct way of influencing the answers. The "Neutral" answer still counts, the "Not importand" answer doesn't count. Why do it in two stages instead of doing it in one?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Heh. I filled in Stemwijzer, Kieskompas AND stomwijser. They all pointed me to the same party.
:)
For people who understand dutch, try the stomwijzer. It is fun.
Geek runner, motorcyclist and professional know-it-all
Just because people took the online tests (yes there was more than one) doesn't mean they would vote for that party. Besides, I took the test multiple times. I also trying out patterns (like yes;no;yes;no;...) just to screw with the statistics.
It would be interesting to see the statistics of the advices these sites gave, and compare it to the actual end result.
This would have to be filtered by IP perhaps, because many people I know simply re-did the test until the result was the party they had in mind all along.
Yes, Minister put it best:
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the rise in crime among teenagers?
Bernard Woolley: Yes.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Do you think there is lack of discipline and vigorous training in our Comprehensive Schools?
Bernard Woolley: Yes.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Do you think young people welcome some structure and leadership in their lives?
Bernard Woolley: Yes.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Do they respond to a challenge?
Bernard Woolley: Yes.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Might you be in favour of reintroducing National Service?
Bernard Woolley: Er, I might be.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Yes or no?
Bernard Woolley: Yes.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Of course, after all you've said you can't say no to that. On the other hand, the surveys can reach opposite conclusions.
(next survey)
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the danger of war?
Bernard Woolley: Yes.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Are you unhappy about the growth of armaments?
Bernard Woolley: Yes.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Do you think there's a danger in giving young people guns and teaching them how to kill?
Bernard Woolley: Yes.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Do you think it's wrong to force people to take arms against their will?
Bernard Woolley: Yes.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Would you oppose the reintroduction of conscription?
Bernard Woolley: Yes.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: There you are, Bernard. The perfectly balanced sample.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Hi all
:-)
I love it. Now we enter the "formation" period! No new laws for a while! I've often wondered why we don't keep the government in this "formation" state forever. They have plenty of laws already; no need for any new ones. This way the people can get used to the rules they have to abide, and find workarounds for the ones they dislike.
I've never noticed any harm from this standstill period. It seems to me the government is now doing what it should be doing; executing the laws that exist already.
Maybe we should have a lawmaking period of 1 year every 10 years, and the rest of the time a moratorium, or a cleanup period for obsolete laws; that would be nice.
Just my somewhat libertarian point of view
I used some vote-web-assistant before last election in Slovakia few months ago and I found it very helpfull.
At the end I did vote as the assistant recommended (even if I originaly did not plan to) because thanks to this advice I contacted the party recommended and get some good response from them.
Of course, I do not deem such assistants as "100% correct" (given all the bias: politicians "lying" in their program, assistant author making some maybe even deliberate "mistakes", etc.) but I consider them as good information value for the effort spent (especialy if compared to watching debates in TV, reading a lot of pages of political programs, ...).
hany
"The puppet on the left has some interesting views!" "...The puppet on the right is more to my liking" "Wait a minute, there's one guy holding both puppets!" "Shut up! Go back to bed America, your government is in control."
A political party in a two-party system is a gigantic coalition of many different interests. Lacking an enforceable party platform, the other forces that decide which of these interests will get rewarded after the votes are counted are not very clear in either major party.There lies a large similarity and a large difference between the US and The Netherlands: here, different interestgroups will probably create a different party, but roughly the left- and rightwing votes are approximately shared 50-50. However, unlike in the US, here it's rather common for a left-center and right-center party to form a coalition. In the US it's either one of the 2, no coalitions outside a single party. However, the situation gets complicated here now because 2-party coalitions are not possible with this election outcome. At least 3 are required, which will be difficult.
IMO, most people spend more time evaluating their next computer or car purchase than they do their next politician purchase. A lot of this is done online.
After examining the links found in the replies and elsewhere, My criticism of the Dutch guide is that it is too short, the English questions appear to contain some biases, there is no ranking of important issues or criteria, the guide does not seem to score individual candidates against a ranking of issues and criteria (because that's missing), and therefore defaults to scoring agreement with particular party platforms. (Because of the distribution of votes in NL, representative party influence is a very important consideration.)
Similar tries at providing a guide in the USA have had sketchy results, and in the USA a politician can say anything to get elected, but not be held accountable for his/her actions once they have a seat.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
I came up Socialist, so there are at least four answers. Anyone turn out to be Communist?
I just read
What I like about it, is that it asks your opinion about 35 topics, you start to think about them. You start discussing these topics with colleagues, family and friends.
One of these sites (there were lots) also listed the reasonings of the political parties. That shed some light into some of their answers, and gave me more to think and discuss.
I hope nobody just obeyed the websites, although I'm sure that happens. But then, people also just obey their partner, parents or friends.
Since Bush is our prime minister, and both legislatures are dominated by Democrats, there will be a need for political compromise, if any laws are to be passed over a Bush veto.
I was ignoring the difference between the U.S. and a parliamentary system. My main point was that there is no national organization with the authority to decide who can run as a either a Democrat or Republican on a primary ballot, since in most states it is the individuals choice to decide what party primary election they wish to enter. However, it s true that there are forces that bring unity to our political "parties."
The Committee chairs have significant power in the lower legislature. They love keep budget bills secret until a few hours before the scheduled vote. Also, there are national committees that distribute money from donors that prefer one-stop-shopping. That in a force for unity!
I was just trying to point out that in the U.S., elected politicians could just as easily be described as independent entrepreneurs, instead of members of a political party.
Can politics be simplified to a ten minute test?
I don't know about politics, but I'd be interested in trying out a website where you answer a few belief questions and it determines the best existing religion that fits your own beliefs, questions compiled from an analysis of the belief systems of all known religions and their differences.
And if it can't find a match, offer to define your set of responses as a new religion named after you!
(Of course, being posted so late, no one will read this.)
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?