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Web-Based Assistant Changes the Face of Dutch Politics
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Nov 23, 2006 06:23 PM
from the can-we-get-that-in-the-states-please dept.
from the can-we-get-that-in-the-states-please dept.
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?"
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Too many choices (Score:4, Funny)
more info (Score:5, Informative)
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).
Too easy to create bias (Score:5, Insightful)
- 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...Parent
Re:Too easy to create bias (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Too easy to create bias (Score:4, Informative)
It also helps to read the question properly.
Parent
So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, if those two groups did actually take the test, it wouldn't be a step, it would be a leap ahead. Unfortunately, they don't. They still vote for the same parties or for the buzzwords.
Voting Compass (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Revealing what was always there? (Score:4, Informative)
The problem with the OKCupid test is... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Simplified (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Weird stuff indeed. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
First shades of something new? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That would be called "democracy."
Voter involvement in the Internet Age (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
What, this is surprising? (Score:3, Insightful)
So an infusion of ten minutes' worth of information caused a shift away from the political middle.
And you are surprised by this?
Other factors (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
MartRe: (Score:3, Informative)
The reason for this shift is simply because large parts of the population aren't happy with the current government.
Nothing new (Score:3, Funny)
It should be obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Who catagorises the parties?
I'm going to vote in a state election tomorrow (Victoria Australia) and this week I received a few pieces of snail mail containing outright lies. Parties with similar policies lie about each other to try and win votes. In some areas they claim one set of policies, in others they switch, depending on who they're trying to impress. The same thing happens federally as well. You'd think that just publicity in the news media would expose this, but people seem too stupid to notice.
Wh
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You needed "deliberative democracy" (Score:3, Interesting)
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.