UK Election Tech Handbook(electiontechhandbook.uk)
electiontechhandbook.uk
UK Election Tech Handbook
https://electiontechhandbook.uk/projects
48 comments
My only concern is that the people who run the tools etc. have their political view. For example "https://tacticalvote.co.uk" is clearly against the Conservative party. So that tool is straight away biased.
> UNITE AGAINST THE TORIES
Every one has a bias at least they own it. As long as they are not pretending to be unbiased I'm fine with it.
Every one has a bias at least they own it. As long as they are not pretending to be unbiased I'm fine with it.
If promoting voting or identifying the disinformation campaigns of nation states is considered bias, than consider me happily labeled. However, I think there's something categorically different about such tools as they are not so much promoting a specific outcome as allowing for a more representative outcome, aka a functioning democracy where people are exchanging ideas not click rates.
Our representative democracy is setup as a two party system (first past the post elections) if we want a more representative outcome we should switch to a direct democracy or implement the alternative vote.
Free exchange of ideas is my ultimate goal but the average voter doesn't share this goal, they get their information from "authoritative" sources such as "their" party or the mass media.
We did have a vote to bring in the alternate vote but every major party (left and right) and media outlet (left and right) slammed it as anti-democratic.
We can't depend on the average voter to get informed and vote representatively because the system intentionally prevents this.
Free exchange of ideas is my ultimate goal but the average voter doesn't share this goal, they get their information from "authoritative" sources such as "their" party or the mass media.
We did have a vote to bring in the alternate vote but every major party (left and right) and media outlet (left and right) slammed it as anti-democratic.
We can't depend on the average voter to get informed and vote representatively because the system intentionally prevents this.
"alternative vote"
If you mean switch from FPTP to some form of RCV for executive positions or proportional representation (PR) for assemblies, then I agree.
For RCV, I strongly prefer Approval Voting, which best balances fairness and simplicity.
But we'll get the most benefits from PR.
If you mean switch from FPTP to some form of RCV for executive positions or proportional representation (PR) for assemblies, then I agree.
For RCV, I strongly prefer Approval Voting, which best balances fairness and simplicity.
But we'll get the most benefits from PR.
"alternative vote" is the term the UK ended up using for instant-runoff voting when it had a referendum a few years back.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_Alternative_Vot...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_Alternative_Vot...
Not quite. I think the proposals only affected the top two ranked candidates in the first round, i.e. arguably no better than First Past the Post.
Approval Voting would be simple, easy to understand and a vast improvemnet.
Approval Voting would be simple, easy to understand and a vast improvemnet.
> If you mean switch from FPTP
Yup don't really care what the new vote is. I live in Northern Ireland where we have single transferable vote I think its great.
It hasn't fixed our two party system but I have noticed a dramatic change in the way people think about voting.
For the most part people no longer feel the need to vote against some one and now vote for who they want, I have also noticed people seem to feel their vote is worth more as a result.
Yup don't really care what the new vote is. I live in Northern Ireland where we have single transferable vote I think its great.
It hasn't fixed our two party system but I have noticed a dramatic change in the way people think about voting.
For the most part people no longer feel the need to vote against some one and now vote for who they want, I have also noticed people seem to feel their vote is worth more as a result.
Well .. yes?
Almost nobody gets into politics without a reason. Nobody is going to put effort into something without an objective to achieve. Nobody is unbiased. And trying to treat good and bad ideas the same way, or honest and dishonest people, is doomed to encourage the bad to drive out the good.
Almost nobody gets into politics without a reason. Nobody is going to put effort into something without an objective to achieve. Nobody is unbiased. And trying to treat good and bad ideas the same way, or honest and dishonest people, is doomed to encourage the bad to drive out the good.
Only trust mutual mistrust.
When all the belligerents, err aspirants, certify the results, then it's probably good enough.
When all the belligerents, err aspirants, certify the results, then it's probably good enough.
Feel free to edit text to note if tools are biased/add tools with different biases.
(disclosure, I helped initiate the doc)
(disclosure, I helped initiate the doc)
Think about the name... You have to vote tactically against something ergo someone
Or _for_ something. All electoral systems have flaws, all the ones that would be practical for this purpose (election of individual candidate representatives from a list by the general population) are subject to tactical voting of some sort.
In this case - FPTP - the tactics are to identify the (usually two) candidates that most plausibly could win in your district and pick from those, ignoring all other candidates. If Apples win with 310 votes and Bears had 290 votes, those Apple-haters who gave Cheese 60 votes to come in a distant third are kicking themselves.
For many (millions of?) voters in the UK the idea is to achieve a specific outcome on a single issue (Brexit) which is not actually on the ballot at all, so tactics come into deciding how to vote so as to make your preferred outcome more likely to occur.
In this case - FPTP - the tactics are to identify the (usually two) candidates that most plausibly could win in your district and pick from those, ignoring all other candidates. If Apples win with 310 votes and Bears had 290 votes, those Apple-haters who gave Cheese 60 votes to come in a distant third are kicking themselves.
For many (millions of?) voters in the UK the idea is to achieve a specific outcome on a single issue (Brexit) which is not actually on the ballot at all, so tactics come into deciding how to vote so as to make your preferred outcome more likely to occur.
Whotargetsme is a good start, but I think this election is one where fighting algorithmically targeted disinformation is going to be absolutely critical.
A lot of these tools have very little money or support. Some of them have had 1m+ views last election.
If something interests you, you could offer to help the developers involved.
(disclosure: I am involved in the project)
If something interests you, you could offer to help the developers involved.
(disclosure: I am involved in the project)
Has anyone in the UK volunteered their skills for any projects like those listed before? Would love to hear about your experience.
I'm working on https://tacticalvote.co.uk and volunteered during the 2017 snap General Election too.
# Tech
Our site handled a lot of traffic at the last snap election. 2.6m unique visitors in the 5 weeks before the vote, a crazy number during the last 48 hours.
To accommodate this we have a static site builder, with our data in Google Sheets. We monitor github for changes, Sheets for changes, and auto-generate the site. The site builder translates the Google Sheet into JSON.
This then pushes a Cache Purge instruction to Cloudflare. Cloudflare is configured to cache everything at the edge for hours, but in the browser for minutes... meaning we serve virtually nothing from the origin server, and over 99% of reqs from Cloudflare caches.
Doing this meant we had to design everything to just be static HTML and JS. It works well.
We communicate in Slack, use MailChimp for email mailouts, and have a GSuite account with some alias emails.
# What is the org like?
No-one is working on this full-time, but we have a team of ~5 people who all do just a little. It's no burden for this to exist, and the costs are virtually $0 outside of the election period.
The only cost we have is MailChimp during the election period, so we will be crowdfunding to allow us to keep people informed about changes, etc.
We are very much a small group of individuals from wildly different backgrounds and political beliefs who happen to have a common goal but for different reasons. We aren't trying to convince each other about "why" to do this work, only that the goal makes it worth it even though different individuals have different goals.
# Why am I involved?
It is not as if I necessarily believe that the Tories are vile, Labour is better, etc. (Though some in the team do express this.)
What I personally believe is that we should have proportional representation, and that mass tactical voting is an important step towards progressive candidates and progressive parties before we can reach a full PR system. Mass tactical voting applies pressure and encourages progressive behaviour.
My contribution then, is towards fairer election systems.
# Tech
Our site handled a lot of traffic at the last snap election. 2.6m unique visitors in the 5 weeks before the vote, a crazy number during the last 48 hours.
To accommodate this we have a static site builder, with our data in Google Sheets. We monitor github for changes, Sheets for changes, and auto-generate the site. The site builder translates the Google Sheet into JSON.
This then pushes a Cache Purge instruction to Cloudflare. Cloudflare is configured to cache everything at the edge for hours, but in the browser for minutes... meaning we serve virtually nothing from the origin server, and over 99% of reqs from Cloudflare caches.
Doing this meant we had to design everything to just be static HTML and JS. It works well.
We communicate in Slack, use MailChimp for email mailouts, and have a GSuite account with some alias emails.
# What is the org like?
No-one is working on this full-time, but we have a team of ~5 people who all do just a little. It's no burden for this to exist, and the costs are virtually $0 outside of the election period.
The only cost we have is MailChimp during the election period, so we will be crowdfunding to allow us to keep people informed about changes, etc.
We are very much a small group of individuals from wildly different backgrounds and political beliefs who happen to have a common goal but for different reasons. We aren't trying to convince each other about "why" to do this work, only that the goal makes it worth it even though different individuals have different goals.
# Why am I involved?
It is not as if I necessarily believe that the Tories are vile, Labour is better, etc. (Though some in the team do express this.)
What I personally believe is that we should have proportional representation, and that mass tactical voting is an important step towards progressive candidates and progressive parties before we can reach a full PR system. Mass tactical voting applies pressure and encourages progressive behaviour.
My contribution then, is towards fairer election systems.
Hey, thanks for the reply, I really appreciate it.
I was about to pick up a new contract, but now the election has been announced I'm quite interested in joining up to help with some projects like this.
If I can find some interesting/impactful projects I'm happy volunteering full time up to the election.
By the way, how is your site promoted?
I was about to pick up a new contract, but now the election has been announced I'm quite interested in joining up to help with some projects like this.
If I can find some interesting/impactful projects I'm happy volunteering full time up to the election.
By the way, how is your site promoted?
> By the way, how is your site promoted?
Purely organic for the most part.
We have 2 or 3 people on the team who work social media, and TBH this is what the majority of the work is.
They may draft a press release, and send it via email to a few contacts. But for the most part, this is extremely unfunded and independent work, with a few people manually writing all of the social media posts and replies.
This time they're discussing actually cut and pasting templates from Google Docs, so it's improving!
Purely organic for the most part.
We have 2 or 3 people on the team who work social media, and TBH this is what the majority of the work is.
They may draft a press release, and send it via email to a few contacts. But for the most part, this is extremely unfunded and independent work, with a few people manually writing all of the social media posts and replies.
This time they're discussing actually cut and pasting templates from Google Docs, so it's improving!
As soon as I saw "UNITE AGAINST THE TORIES" I left the page, regardless of who I vote for this tool is clearly biased.
Counterpoint: the Tories are the largest benefactors of an unfair fptp-based gerrymandered voting system. In 2017 they received 5% more votes than Labour but 20% more MPs. They're the most obvious target for someone interested in tactical voting, regardless of their political persuasion (they're very unlikely to be a Tory voter).
This is simply not true.
FFTP is biased in favour of the party with the largest share of the vote, or perhaps another way of putting is that the relationship between vote share and number of MPs is not linear.
And beyond this, the British electoral system has consistently favoured Labour for decades (as Boundary Commission changes fall behind demographic change and population movement)
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/boundaries-review-bias-...
FFTP is biased in favour of the party with the largest share of the vote, or perhaps another way of putting is that the relationship between vote share and number of MPs is not linear.
And beyond this, the British electoral system has consistently favoured Labour for decades (as Boundary Commission changes fall behind demographic change and population movement)
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/boundaries-review-bias-...
Thanks for the link. I've read the Independent article, clicked through and read the author's Facebook "footnote", and also read the paper referenced in that.
I can't see anything that disputes the claim "The Tories are the clearest benefactors" of the UK's electoral system.
The author makes a repeated assertion that boundaries are currently biased "15 seats" against the Tories, but I cannot tell where this number is coming from.
The fact remains that the Tories have won the last few elections by receiving a disproportionate number of MPs relative to their vote share. Moreover, polling suggests that they will continue to have the highest vote share.
I can't see anything that disputes the claim "The Tories are the clearest benefactors" of the UK's electoral system.
The author makes a repeated assertion that boundaries are currently biased "15 seats" against the Tories, but I cannot tell where this number is coming from.
The fact remains that the Tories have won the last few elections by receiving a disproportionate number of MPs relative to their vote share. Moreover, polling suggests that they will continue to have the highest vote share.
it is utterly bizarre that you're treating the fact that the party that got the most votes won the most seats as evidence that the electoral system is biased towards them.
Have you considered adding elections when the Conservatives didn't win the most votes to your data set?
Have you considered adding elections when the Conservatives didn't win the most votes to your data set?
That's a disappointing misrepresentation of my premise, which is that the system is biased so that high vote shares confer disproportionately many seats.
I know this conversation has gone slightly stale but I've reread that John Rentoul piece a couple of times, and it's very wishy washy but as far as I can make out his argument is this:
1. The Conservative party has proposed some new boundaries.
2. The new boundaries would have given the Conservatives 15 extra seats, according to the 2017 vote share.
3. The current boundaries are very out of date.
4. The new boundaries follow stricter rules about constituency size variation.
5. The new boundaries lead to a reduced number of MPs.
6. 3-5 imply that the new boundaries are fairer than current boundaries.
7. 2 and 6 imply that the current boundaries are biased 15 seats towards Labour.
The hole is in statement 6; points 3 and 5 are irrelevant to the question of fairness and point 4 is weak as there are plenty of ways to gerrymander the boundaries whilst equalising constituency size. What's "utterly bizarre" is that Rentoul expects many people to swallow such a flawed argument.
1. The Conservative party has proposed some new boundaries.
2. The new boundaries would have given the Conservatives 15 extra seats, according to the 2017 vote share.
3. The current boundaries are very out of date.
4. The new boundaries follow stricter rules about constituency size variation.
5. The new boundaries lead to a reduced number of MPs.
6. 3-5 imply that the new boundaries are fairer than current boundaries.
7. 2 and 6 imply that the current boundaries are biased 15 seats towards Labour.
The hole is in statement 6; points 3 and 5 are irrelevant to the question of fairness and point 4 is weak as there are plenty of ways to gerrymander the boundaries whilst equalising constituency size. What's "utterly bizarre" is that Rentoul expects many people to swallow such a flawed argument.
I was at some of the meetings at Newspeak House from where the OP document originated.
I would say that not one person who is volunteering, giving up time and skill, or employed to work on anything listed on there... is without bias.
There is no person or group working on anything to do with politics and cited in that doc, that does not have an agenda of their own.
I would say that not one person who is volunteering, giving up time and skill, or employed to work on anything listed on there... is without bias.
There is no person or group working on anything to do with politics and cited in that doc, that does not have an agenda of their own.
Most people who look at the evidence, inasmuch as reliable evidence can ever exist in the socioeconomic sphere, end up concluding that moving the UK further to the left is not a bad idea. Little wonder that grassroots tech movements look at evidence.
Of course the Conservatives claim that the evidence itself is biased. I am not joking.
Of course the Conservatives claim that the evidence itself is biased. I am not joking.
I don't understand how you can complain the tool is biased against the Conservatives when the purpose of the tool is to prevent a Conservative win.
If it didn't do that it wouldn't do anything. Unless I've missed the point.
If it didn't do that it wouldn't do anything. Unless I've missed the point.
> What I personally believe is that we should have proportional representation, and that mass tactical voting is an important step towards progressive candidates and progressive parties before we can reach a full PR system. Mass tactical voting applies pressure and encourages progressive behaviour.
> My contribution then, is towards fairer election systems.
if this is the case the site should allow you to select who you want to win, instead of being "UNITE AGAINST THE TORIES"
> My contribution then, is towards fairer election systems.
if this is the case the site should allow you to select who you want to win, instead of being "UNITE AGAINST THE TORIES"
If you want the tories to win you don't need a website to tell you how to vote.
It might be more complicated than you realise, depending on where the voter lives.
There are plenty of places where voting Tory stands essentially no chance of resulting in a Tory being elected, especially in this election. So then you need to figure out who could win, and what the effect on prospects for a future Tory government would be for those options - and vote for the one most likely to lead to overall Tory victory, not for the Tory on the ballot.
There are plenty of places where voting Tory stands essentially no chance of resulting in a Tory being elected, especially in this election. So then you need to figure out who could win, and what the effect on prospects for a future Tory government would be for those options - and vote for the one most likely to lead to overall Tory victory, not for the Tory on the ballot.
I was part of creating the initial version of https://www.swapmyvote.uk/ that ran in the 2015 and 2017 general elections. My experience of it was that it was a slow ramp up, but the final week leading up to the general election got very exciting and busy. There's a fun kind of energy in working on something like this, where people get more and more engaged right up to voting day... and then an anti-climatic finish afterwards, when interest vanishes overnight.
I’ve not but I think a lot of these projects are run by small numbers of people for free. The list is coming from newspeak house (there’s a link at the top) and they try to run events helping people interested in working on various political projects to meet one another (amongst other things). Think a mix of academic political science, people who work in politics/think tanks, and people who have various other skills in eg technology or science and want to get involved in political projects. Apart from events they also put together resources like this one of projects people may be interested in.
The institution is in some sense not partisan but I guess the political makeup of the people there is somewhat like HN (but applied to U.K. rather than us politics), maybe a bit more left leaning and less libertarian leaning.
If you’re interested in getting involved or using your skills but you aren’t really sure what you Gould go to one of their events. They’re in Whitechapel and are pretty friendly.
The institution is in some sense not partisan but I guess the political makeup of the people there is somewhat like HN (but applied to U.K. rather than us politics), maybe a bit more left leaning and less libertarian leaning.
If you’re interested in getting involved or using your skills but you aren’t really sure what you Gould go to one of their events. They’re in Whitechapel and are pretty friendly.
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This looks like an interesting initiative and I wish you the best with it, however I think you should reconsider placing a WhatsApp group link on a publicly crawlable webpage.
This is a good addition for the Filterbubble breakers section..
https://www.talkingeurope.eu/
"Talking Europe connects citizens having an opposing political view - and living in a different country!
Our mission is to create a European public sphere. We want to foster democracy and cohesion in Europe."
https://www.talkingeurope.eu/
"Talking Europe connects citizens having an opposing political view - and living in a different country!
Our mission is to create a European public sphere. We want to foster democracy and cohesion in Europe."
Please add it in.
Does anyone know of a similar resource for the next US presidential election?
I'm only hooked in to the Democratic technology side, but there is https://thedemlabs.org/ that collates (and creates) a bunch of technological solutions for campaigns problems.
I'm also personally affiliated with https://ragtag.org/ which is a bunch of volunteers trying to make said resources and tools.
I'm also personally affiliated with https://ragtag.org/ which is a bunch of volunteers trying to make said resources and tools.
We (Newspeak House) would love to see one created. If you know people in that space, put up some tech and share it. Feel free to use our template if you credit us.
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> Join the WhatsApp group to be kept up to date with major updates & news: WhatsApp Group
Yeah, sure, hand over all your political planning to Facebook.
Yeah, sure, hand over all your political planning to Facebook.
Every UK political party and MP uses WhatsApp groups for pretty much everything according to Westminster journalists.