Comments on: IDEA #58 – Politics: Who Should You Vote For?

By: Andrew Hunt

Andrew Hunt — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 00:04:06 +0000

Hey all –

http://www.glassbooth.org

Funny, I was really into this idea for a long time and still working on it. I think developing quizzes for every candidate wouldn’t be that scalable. But — it would be interesting to have a more wikipedia-style, edited website where people themselves organize the elections and the issues. The Davis Wiki project actually has a page dedicated to politics that is user-edited, and it’s high quality content.

@Bob Ellsworth, I would agree — people are not interested in the details. BUT, I think they would be interested in specific causes. I for example am hugely interested in education in Massachusetts, and how a candidate stands on that particular issue can be a deal breaker for me.

Feel free to shoot me an email if you’re interested in talking more, would love to get some perspective!

By: Julian

Julian — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:50:15 +0000

we already have that in Germany. its called wahl o mat http://www.wahl-o-mat.de/europa/

wahl means election

By: Cybercorrespondent

Cybercorrespondent — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 03:01:20 +0000

These two videos might help you decide who to vote for.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRmB93McZeI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs

By: Bob Ellsworth

Bob Ellsworth — Thu, 10 May 2007 21:58:06 +0000

Voter.com tried this in 2000. Big, expensive ($20M) flop. The biggest problem is people are not really that interested in the details – they get most of their political information from friends, family, Leno and Daily Show and the assorted talking heads.

Also, people tend to vote personalities these days in everything (how else can you explain Sanjya) and looking at something analytically would be the death of politics. These guys spend all their time purposely not giving you the details of how, but rather spend their time explaining why.

The most effective way to get votes is still the people standing outside a polling place with the pieces of paper telling you who to vote for if you are an R or a D.

In VA, where I live, George Allen lost a shoe-in campaign simply by saying Macaca – once he lost the stable R support, he was doomed.

By: Colin Dowling

Colin Dowling — Thu, 10 May 2007 17:24:26 +0000

Additionally, one thing that could be very viable and would work much better in local elections would be to have network features that allowed candidates and their supporters to reach out to folks on the site.

The flip side to all this is that I don’t think there would be much frequency of use in a site like this. Politicians usually stay with the same platform, so if you entered your preferences and got your answer on who was most likely to represent you well, what reason would you have for ever coming back to the site?

By: Colin Dowling

Colin Dowling — Thu, 10 May 2007 17:21:46 +0000

Not a bad idea, but I would be willing to bet there are a handful of sites that help match your interests to a certain candidate. If I recall correctly, Time/CNN had one in ’04 with regard to the Dem primary where it would help you determine where a candidate’s position was relative to your own interest.