Looks interesting, how many visits did it get for the just gone elections?
If it's going to be a full resource for voters on local election info in the same way as YNMP it could do with some features like postcode search (I don't get why it's a candidate search, surely that's the one thing I probably won't know?), full data on who all the candidates are in all local elections (this is something that presumably requires volunteer time) and an API to pull the structured data back for other sites to use (I don't know how you're finding your initial data to contact candidates with at the moment, but it's important that other people can use it).
One concept we gradually moved towards for the election was that YNMP is a backend database that holds all the data and tools to fix it/make it, and other sites can handle actually making full featured interfaces for it and adding value (Q&A interfaces etc.), so you have a nice separation of concerns in layers connected by their public APIs - which may be a model worth considering for local elections, especially considering that finding out who the candidates are is even harder. If something like this could be worked out, I'm sure Democracy Club volunteers could help crowdsource info on candidates.
Tim On 19/05/10 11:21, Mark Bel wrote:
http://votewise.co.uk has a volunteer network that covers local elections and by-elections. "Votewise is a completely free public information service that tells you when a local election is held in your area, who the candidates are and what they stand for." The model is slightly different to YNMP in that candidates are invited (a letter via the snail mail) to login an publish their own data and respond to questions from constituents directly. On average about 38% of candidates participate, in some campaigns they all do - like this: http://votewise.co.uk/index.php?pg=show&eid=00AMGS-0 If anyone wants to help us list, invite and prod candidates that would be ace you can register here: http://votewise.co.uk/volunteer The project's privately funded, completely free to all, utterly impartial and endorsed by the Electoral Commission, heaps of LGA's, pretty much all active political parties (88 so far) and thousands of candidates.. While we focus on local's we have listed others and are happy to publish other parliamentary/mayoral campaigns if the demand is there. Cheers, Mark -- Mark Bell http://votewise.co.uk tel: 0208 123 2862 mob: 0774 086 1862 _______________________________________________ Mailing list [email protected] Archive, settings, or unsubscribe: https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public
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