On 23/04/2013 16:00, David Durant wrote:
Hi, I agree with Dave that it does appear to be a bit... Sparse...
That's a fair description of my initial response, too :-)
I've been kicking an idea around for a long time for a site that would let people vote on issues but it would have a number of significant differences: 1) Users would need to be identified in such a way as to be certain of their home address (i.e. FB / Twitter / G+ accounts would not be enough). It might be possible to do this through a credit-card check but that might be expensive. Ideally it would be done through Gov UK's new Digital Identity system if it is opened up into a platform.
That's an interesting possibility, although it runs the risk of putting people off who may not want their government ID data shared - even for the purposes of verification - with a third party site (and not to mention those for whom the whole concept of government digital identity is anathema!).
2) The items to vote on would not be things thought up by the people running the site but instead would come from high profile national and local campaign groups (think Amnesty, Open Rights Group, Mumsnet, local anti-hospital closure groups, etc).
I think that's good, too, providing you can get buy-in from a sufficiently disparate set of groups.
Having said that, this isn't hugely different to what the various polling companies are already beginning to do. So it would need some kind of USP beyond merely "vote on an issue" to make it worthwhile.
The theory would be to move away from email bombing MPs to moving to a site where MPs can easily see how many people in their area (due to confirmed addresses) have expressed an opinion about a particular campaign. The MP would have the option to provide a response on the site showing why they were / were not also in favour.
Any move away from mail-bombing would certainly get a favourable response from those targetted by the campaigns. I'm less sure it would appeal to the campaigners.
Following what Dave said about how the site would become well known, the theory for this version is that once it is working the pitch is taken to the large campaigning groups in an effort to ask them to move from emailing MPs to using this system. If some of those pick it up then they would, in effect, market the site themselves.
The problem is that for many campaign groups, the number of emails they generate is a bit of a willy-waving exercise and I doubt they'd be willing to give that up. There's also the fact that a mail-bomb campaign offers no easy way to vote against the proposal being campaigned for, so it tends to exaggerate the perceived a support. An online voting system, with the option to both support and oppose a proposal, might just reveal how small a minority the campaigners are in :-)
It's not practical at the moment for the same reason that 38 Degrees isn't a convincing way to do things - i.e. there is no verifiable way to stop people automating the creation of multiple accounts for vote-bombing.
That's very true. MPs of my acquaintance say that they routinely disregard mail-bomb campaigns, on the grounds that if someone doesn't care enough about an issue to get in touch directly then their opinion is no more useful than that expressed to any other pollster. A YouGov survey showing 58% of people supporting a government proposal is more convincing than a million-strong email campaign against it.
Mark -- Please take a short survey about salary perceptions: http://meyu.eu/am My blog: http://mark.goodge.co.uk _______________________________________________ developers-public mailing list [email protected] https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public Unsubscribe: https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/options/developers-public/archive%40mail-archive.com
