Election helper

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Posted in Proposals 2006

Author: Hugh Parker

What NEED does this meet?

There’s a local election tomorrow and I’ve been unable to read anything about my candidates on the web, other than their names and parties. I have a big problem with voting on party lines in local elections, and I’d like access to some information that would make a better decision possible. I would like, for the next election, somewhere to read a statement from each candidate, maybe read their answers to some questions, and to find their contact details.

What is the APPROACH?

The site could scrape the names of the candidates from election websites, like http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/elections.bcc (or possibly you guys have access to a better source of that data). It would then be possible for each candidate to submit an entry which I could then read by putting in my postcode, writetothem.com style.

What are the BENEFITS to people?

Access to some information that will make it easier to vote in an informed way.

What is the COMPETITION?

There’s no similar service out there that I know of. One of my candidates has been arrested for electoral fraud, and it’s hard enough to find even anything referring to that on the web.

What BUDGETS & LOGISTICS are required?

I think the major hassle would be verifying that submissions of information were from the candidate as claimed. I think the easiest way to do this would be to create an emailed ‘invitation’ to them to edit their page – “click this link to edit your entry”. We could then invite the general public to submit an email address for a candidate – “invite your candidate to post a statement”. Verifying that those email addresses are owned by the claimed owner would be difficult. An alternative would be to ask local party secretaries for a list of email addresses.

4 Comments

  1. I like this idea and have been thinking on similar lines. I’d like to make it more general and have more details on how it’d work, so I’m going to submit it as a separate proposal. But as far as I’m concerned they’re either the same thing or very closely related.

  4. Cllr Allan Witherick

    I like this idea. Often people vote for a party or an idea but this relies on the local group putting out leaflets. We do that, but not everyone reads them (Why is it a pizza leaflet seems to be in the letter box before me every time!).

    However, maybe the site should be a campaign for each council to do this, rather than an attempt at a central list…