Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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.
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.
umm, that isn't anything like what propaganda is.
From m-w.com:
1 capitalized : a congregation of the Roman curia having jurisdiction over missionary territories and related institutions
2 : the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person
3 : ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause; also : a public action having such an effect
How does "It reduces choices to black or white" satisfy any of those definitions?
In simple terms:
You are not voting online... The program is recommending you a party to choose when you do go and vote.
We are also dicussing the option of making the actual ballot like this as well, with the ability to recommend a party.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
it's not an online voting system, it's a recommendation system. There's no reason at all why something similar couldn't be used in the USA.
IP Addresses have nothing to do with it.
Advanced users are users too!
Here are the 30 topics, each of which you are asked to 'agree' with or 'disagree' with.
WANRING: This warning is misspelt.
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.
Just to make it clear, the pedophiles' party couldn't run. A party needs 570 pledges of support from voters (30 in each of the 19 districts) in order to take part in elections and they failed this requirement.
The strong shift to both extremes was indicated by polls before the introduction of the many online tests. As a result, we can conclude that the online tests didn't have a significant influence.
The reason for this shift is simply because large parts of the population aren't happy with the current government.
This sig is intentionally left blank
The questions were very straightforward. "Should landlords be allowed to decide their own rent?" "Should people under 27 continue to receive social security?" "Should animal rights be included in the constitution?" Even the trickiest hot-button question (in the US, at least) was about as neutral as possible: "Should tackling the terrorism problem take priority over individual freedoms and liberties?"
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
survive the flood of imported goods?
It also helps to read the question properly.
if(!toilet_paper) roll.replace(new roll);