Is there an app for that? Voter information in the event of a snap election

Posted on October 28, 2019 by The Constitution Unit

Digital technology has transformed the way we access information and interact with services. Democratic services have not kept up, risking a situation where democracy is seen as out of date. Joe Mitchell argues that it’s time to dream big: the UK has an opportunity to create a new digital-first office of civic education and democratic information, to restore trust and grow public understanding of our democracy.

What’s the biggest threat to democracy in the UK? Interference by foreign powers? Disinformation? Fake news? Micro-targeting of voters on social media? Or is it more simple than that? Is itt is just that engaging in the democratic process no longer fits with people’s lives?

Digital technology has transformed the way we live. It has changed our expectations of how we access information, how we communicate, how we bank, shop or access government services. It should not surprise us then, to learn that people expect to access information on the democratic process digitally. For example, Google News Trends published the top ten searches on Google UK on the day of the 2015 general election; these all related to the election. The most popular question was ‘who should I vote for’ — a genuinely complex question, but the following searches were straightforward: variations on the theme of ‘who are the candidates’ and ‘where do I vote’.

Worryingly, the democratic process has been left behind by digital transformation. A gulf has emerged between the way we live our lives now and the way we participate in democracy: it can feel like something from a bygone age. Notices of elections are posted to a noticeboard in front of a council building and (not even in all cases) uploaded as a PDF to a webpage buried in a council website somewhere. While the digital register-to-vote service is welcome, no state institution has taken responsibility for meeting the digital demand for even the most basic information: when are elections happening, who is standing, what was the result? How to vote is covered by the Electoral Commission’s website, but with research on voter ID showing that only 8% of voters know the voting rules, clearly not enough is being done. Continue reading →

Doing democracy better: a positive blueprint for the future

Posted on March 7, 2019 by The Constitution Unit

The Constitution Unit has today published a major new report, Doing Democracy Better: How Can Information and Discourse in Election and Referendum Campaigns in the UK Be Improved? Drawing on detailed cross-national research, it proposes a bold set of reforms designed to transform the quality of democratic practice in the UK. In this post, the report’s authors, Alan Renwick and Michela Palese, summarise their analysis and explain their proposals. They argue that a new, publicly funded ‘information hub’ should be developed that gathers multiple information types from diverse sources, all guided by deep citizen deliberation.

The laws governing our elections and referendums are no longer ‘fit for purpose’. That is the stark conclusion of a recent report by the House of Commons Digital Culture, Media and Sport Committee, which calls for far-reaching changes to the regulation of online political communications. This is the latest in a series of reports (see also a recent collection of essays from the Electoral Reform Society) highlighting the threat to our existing democratic practices posed by the digital revolution and proposing measures to address this.

These contributions are important and deserve careful attention. Yet in our own report, generously funded by the McDougall Trust and published today, we aim to go further. We argue that we should strive to strengthen our democratic practice around elections and referendums, not merely protect the status quo from new challenges. Dissatisfaction with the quality of our democratic discourse is not limited to digital communications. Disinformation is propagated not just online, but also through traditional media. Voters and politicians alike are frustrated that reasonable discussions about politics and policies often seem impossible.

We argue that we could do much better. Our report analyses nine distinct strategies for strengthening political information. Through detailed case studies of practice around the world, we examine what does and does not work. We then propose an integrated model that would place the UK at the forefront of democratic renewal, enabling lively, diverse, citizen-led discussion to take place during election and referendum campaigns. Continue reading →

How online quizzes could improve information during election campaigns: lessons from Germany

Posted on April 19, 2018 by The Constitution Unit

Ongoing Constitution Unit research is exploring how quality of information and public discussion during election and referendum campaigns can be improved. In recent years, voting advice applications have been promoted as a way of providing impartial, good-quality information on salient issues and parties’ positions thereon. Michela Palese outlines the debate on this topic and relates early thoughts from a research trip to Germany, where the state-sponsored Wahl-O-Mat was used 15.7 million times during the 2017 federal election campaign.

Since last May, Dr Alan Renwick and I have been working on a project to understand how the quality of information and public discussion during election and referendum campaigns could be improved. In this context, I have been examining ‘voting advice applications’ (VAAs): online tools that aim to assist users in their voting decision.

In this post, I briefly contextualise the emergence of VAAs and consider the debate on the role of such tools in the UK. I then report initial findings from a research trip to Germany, where the Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung; hereafter BPB) develops and promotes a voting advice application – the Wahl-O-Mat – for all federal and most state elections.

The origins of voting advice applications

The first VAA, the Stemwijzer, was developed in the Netherlands in 1989. Available on paper or on a diskette, it aimed to increase secondary school students’ knowledge of the differences and similarities among parties, and to aid the formation of party political choices. VAAs became available online in the mid-1990s in Finland and the Netherlands.

VAAs have spread particularly since the early 2000s, and almost all European countries now have at least one. While they take varied forms, all VAAs present users with statements to agree or disagree with and then match these responses to the positions of political parties. Developers generally use party manifestos or prior statements as a starting point, and often engage parties directly in the development process. Continue reading →

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Tag Archives: Wahl-O-Mat

Doing democracy better: a positive blueprint for the future

How online quizzes could improve information during election campaigns: lessons from Germany

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