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?"

So what?

[jeroenb]

Does anybody actually believe that before there were 10-minute web-based tests, everybody used to go out and read all the different parties' complete programs and base their decision on a comprehensive analysis of them all? Ofcourse not, people used to base it on soundbytes and whether someone appears to be trustworthy. So from that perspective, using a 10-minute test to base your choice on some actually relevant political issues is a great step forward.

Simplified

[nyri]

Can politics be simplified to a ten minute test?

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.

Too easy to create bias

[KiloByte]

Well... then what about the two following questions:

• 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...

Voter involvement in the Internet Age

[elronxenu]

Can't we just vote for the policies directly, rather than vote for the people who will vote for the policies? The internet gives us the tool to become much more directly involved in the running of the country.

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.

So many stemwijzers, only one vote!

[wisse]

I do not have the impression that people actually take it as an advice. There are now so many "stemwijzers" online with so many different systems and outcomes that people do not take them too serious.
The best thing about the "stemwijzers" is that they get a discussion going about the programmes of the different political parties and that they might point you to possibilities you hadn't really considered. After all, there are so many parties to choose from here in the Netherlands!

Re:Interesting

[cloricus]

I'll take a break from my usual privacy based point of view on topics like this and say I'm all for this idea. My city voted on a very important deal (in relation to water) recently and went for the popularity contest option instead of the informed opinion and now we are screwed - no water plans when we run out in 08 and plenty of towns queuing up to steal what water we do have left. So I'm all for letting people have a place where they can go and put in their views and be given a party to support...In a day and age where people don't remember what parties stand for and then don't hold them accountable when they move to the left or right of that I think we should be getting people back into the swing of voting for what they believe instead of who they believe in (single person popularity contests etc). Note this would only be for advise and I don't believe it should replace going down to a polling booth to cast.

What, this is surprising?

[inviolet]

So an infusion of ten minutes' worth of information caused a shift away from the political middle.

And you are surprised by this?

useful tool

[u2boy_nl]

I think these tools are useful. There are not many people who read the full election programmes. Some of them are 106 pages!

Suppose you're an average informed voter and you're planning to vote for party A.

You take the tests at stemwijzer and kieskompas, and then you find out that you that you don't agree with a lot of the party's views. That gives you something to think about right? I think these tests stimulate people to think more about the views held by various political parties.

Voters end up more informed after using them, how is that bad?

Personally I already knew which party i was going to vote on before i used both sites: party X.

Remarkably the results from both sites were right on, both showed that i had very high similarity with party X

BTW, i think the headline is way off, "Web-Based Assistant Changes the Face of Dutch Politics" is a gross exaggeration.
Sure, there will always be group of people who base their vote solely on the tests, and that is regrettable, but i really don't think that it had much influence on the outcome of this election.

Re:First shades of something new?

[sinij]

Ultimately this won't work due to voter indifference. Another problem with this approach is that risk-taking and unpopular but needed decisions will become nonexistent.

I voted in said elections

[scenestar]

And in the netherlands we have democracy in which seats of parliament are devided by percentage of votes (unlike the american "winner takes all" approach )

This means that we have dozens of parties competing per election.

Now all of them have their own ideas and standpoints, and having to read all their party programs is tedious and boring.

Seeing as most people are more interested in soccer matches than politics the "stemwijzer" is a very good way in finding out which party represents your view. I consider it to be a great aid in democracy as voters make more INFORMED choices regarding who to vote for.

(On a sidenote, I voted sp and I didn't need no stinkin "stemwijzer" to decide that, but then again I'm a political geek)

It should be obvious

[Opportunist]

Today's politics can be summed up in 10 minutes. More and more people want to deal less and less with politics, thus politicians have to offer simple, 'in a nutshell' solutions for complex problems. If they can't, people get bored with them, don't listen to them and don't vote for them. They need to offer popular, easily understood slogans instead of elaborate, through discussions and plans.

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:So what?

[Opportunist]

Well, looking around me, there were two big group of voters before the advent of 10 minute tests: The traditional voter (who votes for 'his' party because he always did) and the buzzword voter (who votes for whatever party has the smartest slogan).

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.

Re:What if...

[Anonymous Coward]

What if there had been bias on the test in favour of on or another far left, or worse, far right political party?

Why is bias in favor of a far right party worse than a far left party?

Re:I took the test

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

Well casting a vote is black and white... you are stuck voting for someone that you may not agree on in all issues.

Re:First shades of something new?

[Overzeetop]

Instead of voting on parties, why not vote on issues?

That would be called "democracy."

Re:I took the test

[FreakyLefty]

The thing that I liked most about the test was that you could say "don't know" to the questions. When was the last time you met someone who could have an informed opinion on every single one of those topics? Should Schiphol Airport continue to grow? How should I know?

All that was missing from this one was a "don't care" option. Oh, and a question on software patents.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a good question, and StemWijzer is highly open to abuse. There is no real indication that this has happened though. There is a feeling that it hasn't been thought trough properly, and some alternatives were created (and parodies to show how easy it is to slant such a system). Next time, things may be better because of the competition.

On the other hand, these elections were highly unspectacular in terms of discussed issues. I don't think a political party would risk burning its hands at creating this kind of scandal. If it would leak out, it could easily become one of the major issues in the election and lead lots of people to simply switch to an other party with similar points.