Politics

10179 readers

659 users here now

In-depth political discussion from around the world; if it's a political happening, you can post it here.

Guidelines for submissions:

Where possible, post the original source of information.
- If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
Social media should be a source of last resort.

These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:

Socialism

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

kalanggam@beehaw.org

circularfish@beehaw.org

knokelmaat@beehaw.org

Gaywallet@beehaw.org

JuBe@beehaw.org

alyaza@beehaw.org

TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.org

JCPhoenix@beehaw.org

remington@beehaw.org

Wahl-O-Mat Matches Your Position Against Political Parties Positions (EU Elections) (beehaw.org)

submitted 5 months ago by Kissaki@beehaw.org to c/politics@beehaw.org

3 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Today, we had European elections in Germany.

We have the Wahl-O-Mat, a state-funded service, where you can answer 38 questions, and then match your positions against a selection of or all political parties that could be elected. It then shows you how much overlap (a percentage) you have with the various parties and their answers to those questions.

I find this to be a very important and useful tool for citizen information.
Campaign adverts are shallow and colorful PR. Broad slogans.
Individuals are not necessarily what the broader party policies are and how they vote. Personal sympathy can even be misleading in that a sympathetic person may not hold the values and positions you do.
Voting for a party, I think their program and stances should be the primary decision factor. (Alongside assessment of whether you can trust them of course.)
It obviously and drastically shows you misconceptions about parties and your alignment, and shows you parties relevant to you that you may not have known about before.

Do other countries have something/things like that too? A tool to match personal stance against political parties' stances? [In a concrete and up-to-date way.]

top 3 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] brisk@aussie.zone 3 points 5 months ago

Australia has ABC Vote Compass, but it has some oddities based on issues with our political/media landscape:

it only places you relative to the three top parties
all the questions are specific election wedge issues (mostly between the top two parties) rather than broader ideological questions, and so it only updates in the run up to each federal (read: national, Australia wide) election
it takes politicians statements at face value, and doesn't factor in actual behaviour in power which is often at odds (if you're curious, look up the history of high speed rail or nuclear power in Australia. Both have been used for electioneering again and again, neither exist despite the advocating party winning)

[–] overflowingmemory@links.hackliberty.org 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

But does this not centalize power to the team who develop the Wahl-OMat? They could scew the results in multiple ways:

Imagine they put in a bias to automatically substract some "overlapping percentage" points of your favorite party
Overvaluing certain question topics while ignoring other topics. Topics enter and leave public discourse over time, Wahl-OMat needs to adjust accordingly.

There should be multiple Wahl-OMat services to choose from imo...

[–] Kissaki@beehaw.org 2 points 2 months ago

I don't see how alternatives to choose from solve your issue though. I'd rather have one or few trustworthy ones.

There are/were alternatives. I looked at two others.

Results are transparent.