I’ve been playing around with the poll on isidewith.com. It’s a questionnaire on political issues that matches your views up against those of the US 2012 presidential candidates. It’s supposed to give you an idea of who you should vote for. I have a few criticisms of the way the poll is designed, but I still think the concept itself is interesting.
Could a well designed poll like this help raise the sanity waterline? Here’s what I’m thinking:
Most people don’t have the time, energy, or incentive to independently research candidates and compare their positions.
A well researched, automated poll makes the above information effortless to get, and maybe even fun.
Getting accurate feedback on politicians positions can help us make more rational decisions on who to vote for.
Politics is the mind-killer, so there is a lot of potential progress to make.
Mostly, I think that any tool of this sort that somehow becomes sufficiently popular and effective to actually make a measurable difference to US presidential election results, relative to the effects of advertising and blogs and newspaper articles and so forth, will be co-opted by a raft of deliberately biased competitors long before that point.
That said, I do think something similar would be useful for local elections. Of course, it would be a lot more work to develop and maintain at that level. Those two facts are not unrelated.
I’ve been playing around with the poll on isidewith.com. It’s a questionnaire on political issues that matches your views up against those of the US 2012 presidential candidates. It’s supposed to give you an idea of who you should vote for. I have a few criticisms of the way the poll is designed, but I still think the concept itself is interesting.
Could a well designed poll like this help raise the sanity waterline? Here’s what I’m thinking:
Most people don’t have the time, energy, or incentive to independently research candidates and compare their positions.
A well researched, automated poll makes the above information effortless to get, and maybe even fun.
Getting accurate feedback on politicians positions can help us make more rational decisions on who to vote for.
Politics is the mind-killer, so there is a lot of potential progress to make.
What do you think?
Mostly, I think that any tool of this sort that somehow becomes sufficiently popular and effective to actually make a measurable difference to US presidential election results, relative to the effects of advertising and blogs and newspaper articles and so forth, will be co-opted by a raft of deliberately biased competitors long before that point.
That said, I do think something similar would be useful for local elections. Of course, it would be a lot more work to develop and maintain at that level. Those two facts are not unrelated.