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Call For Proposals 2009 » Hear Hear

By David Salgado

Describe your idea:

A way for anyone to give a quick thumbs up or down to an MP, for a specific statement, vote or action (like Digg for MPs).
The site should show a snippet of what the approval/disapproval score relates to (e.g. http://bit.ly/dtSpO).
Ideally, it would be possible to give a thumbs up/down via the web, Facebook, Twitter and SMS.
It would be great if there were a snippet of code that bloggers could use to put a thumbs up/down vote on their posts about an MPs actions/statements, so that everyone ends up voting on the same thing (a bit like a trackback to a blog article).

What problem does it solve?:

Maybe MPs would behave better if their egos got stroked from public approval occasionally, or if they got very quick feedback about things they do or say.

I write to my MP a lot, but I don’t always feel strongly enough to do that, particularly when I approve of something she does. So, from her POV, she only hears that I hate her (which I do, but that’s beside the point).

This would be something the public could do on impulse, with minimal effort, and would be very easy for MPs to interpret, both in terms of the number of people who were interested, and a sense of the public mood on the issue.

Type of idea: A brand new project

4 Responses to “Hear Hear”

  1. Terence Eden Says:

    I quite like this idea. How fine grained should it be? Should people vote on whole speeches / statements or just soundbites?

  2. David Salgado Says:

    I’d say people should be able to vote on anything with a URL. So, the actual target of the vote would be the combination of an MP and a URL.
    If someone wants to extract a single comment for voting from a long speech, they would need to create a blog post or snippet somehow (could even be a tweet) discussing just that comment, and then that URL becomes the target of the vote (along with the name of the MP).

  3. Hector G Says:

    I think this is a great idea. It would be really easy to add a thumbs up/down and comment button to the recent appearances section of theyworkforyou

  4. Nathan Massey Says:

    I’ve just submitted a similar idea where a user would vote on anything their MP has the opportunity to vote on in Parliament (bills, EDM’s etc).

    I think something along the lines of a Digg style approve/disapprove mechanism for things MP’s say/do would be a really great tool, not only to let individuals show how they feel about their MP’s actions, but also to see the overall public opinion too.


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