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f you listen to the

pollsters, youll already

know that the 2015 UK

General Election is going

to be a messy one, with many agreeing

that the big two will struggle to win

an all-out majority.

And even if one of them is able

to cobble together enough seats to

form a government, which could

be via an unholy four-way, it looks

like fewer than 25% of people will

have voted for the governing party.

#Legitimacycrisis?

Anyway, while broadcasters and

policy wonks battle over the much-

debated TV debates, and ahead of the

back room deals that may follow the

vote proper, people will actually have

to decide how theyre going to cast

their vote.

ENTER TECHSince the last election, the UK has

become a de facto digital nation, with

the whole country and his nan now

the proud owner of a smartphone, and

possibly a tablet too. And there are

now tens of VAAs (thats Voter Advice

Applications) online and in the app

stores aimed at helping those people

VOTE FOR TECHwho arent quite sure how, or even if,

theyre going to vote.

It refl ects the disengagement people feel with politicians,

not politics, says Emma Mulqueeny,

who founded digital government

service Rewired State. It fulfi ls the need people have to vote on issues not

people or parties, and they will trust

a third party assessment of what they

care about to steer them towards the

party that will best represent them.

Representative democracy is

challenged by this digital age, but

people are not ready, willing or

even interested in challenging this -

there is an assumption that people

are not interested in politics, she

says. I have not found this to be

true, everyone is. They are just not

interested in politicians.

Vote for Policies, which leads people

through survey questions based on

each partys manifesto, is probably the

most well-recognised platform in this

space.

They think around 2 million people

in the UK used one of these tools

during the last General Election,

and they are expecting a signifi cant increase this time. As of March 19,

I133,000 people had already completed

the new 2015 survey.

Its founder Matt Chocqueel-

Mangan says he had voted in the past

but couldnt have told you one policy

he voted for and how the parties

were different. That worried him.

But as a web developer, he knew he

had the skills to help other people in

his situation make more informed

choices.

Its pretty unreasonable to expect

people to align with one party on every

issue, he says. But you can only

vote for one party. We bring policies

into the conversation and we feel

that gives people the chance to know

what political parties stand for, which

makes them more inclined to vote.

TINDER FOR POLITICSUsing up their weekends at youth hack

event Young Rewired State, London

teen coding pair Freddie Poser and

Zak Cutner decided to strip out the

parties and people altogether for the

launch of their Tinder-style app Votr.

Spurred on by an Electoral

Commission survey that said young

people were not engaging with

politics because they wanted more

Kirsty Styles@kirstystyles1

SHOULD TECHNOLOGY HELP DECIDE YOUR VOTE?

TH E LOOK AH EADELECTION TECH

29

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information about candidates, Poser

and Cutner built a tool that curates the

anonymised views of local candidates

from Twitter.

People are becoming extremely

concerned over just getting down to

policies whereas for us it is actually

the personalities of your local

candidates that adds the engagement

to politics, especially for young

people, Cutner says. Its also

important to understand about things

happening at a local level and not

just nationally, its far too easy to just

vote for your favourite party without

actually realising what changes your

candidate will make in your area.

ITS TWITTER WOT WON ITHaving just released Votr, the app

is unlikely to infl uence an election, but it defi nitely fi lls a gap, Cutner says. Twitter was the obvious choice

to power our app; the short, concise

tweets appeal to younger voters and

allow them to use a medium theyre

already familiar with to discover

something new. Weve also received

feedback critical of the irrelevance of

some politicians tweets, so we want

to encourage politicians to tweet in a

more savvy way.

It can change the way that

representatives are kept accountable,

agrees Aleksi Knuutila, who by day

is teaching anthropology at UCL

and fi nishing her PhD, by night developing YourCandidates.org.uk.

It means people are less dependent

on the major media channels and

party marketing for making up their

minds, and can hear more easily

directly from their candidates. This

is all positive. The next step that we

have only started on is to make it two-

directional, more like a conversation.

I think we have only seen the very

beginning of it.

Twitter has become something of a

driving force for politics all of its own,

among the chattering classes at least,

with as many as one third of young

users surveyed by the social marketing

giant saying they have changed

their vote based on tweets theyve

seen. The company also advertises a

There is anassumption that

people are not interested in politics. I have not found this to be true, everyone is. They are

just not interested in politicians

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whole host of ways that politicians

might want to use the platform to be

more liked by its 15 million UK users,

but it may cost them.

To add to the debate on how social

media is having an impact on politics,

Nestas Political Futures Tracker

analyses Twitter data to see what

MPs and candidates are talking about

ahead of the election, as well as how

much traction they are having over

this tech-savvy but not necessarily

politically-engaged audience,

explains Jen Rae, senior researcher

at Nesta, a social innovation charity.

We feed into it reams of data scraped

from social media sites like Twitter

as well as the web and it produces

for us a quantitative analysis of the

information.

Voter choice web apps have the

potential to bring the political debate

to a wider and potentially younger

audience by making it easier to link

party policy with the problems that

voters would like to see addressed.

However, the jury is still out on

whether they will actually make a

difference on the voting habits of

harder to engage voters.

Emma Mulqueeny agrees. People

will use these to make their decision

but these are the people who are

inclined to vote anyway. I dont think

they will persuade people to go and

vote who wouldnt normally bother.

It definitely will have little impact on that crucial younger vote which as

we know, if they voted, could take us

from deadlock come election time.

HARD TO REACHAsk Amy launched in February as an

Android and web app where people

can ask any political question and get

an answer, in plain, chatty English.

Amy recognises key terms from the

question and looks up the answers

that best matches it.

The top questions asked through

the app suggest that the people

engaging with Amy are unsure

about voting in general, and we are

excited to be providing an innovative

solution to political disengagement,

says Binita Mehta, co-founder of the

cross-partisan, independent campaign

group No One Ever Told Me About

Politics.

There is a desperate need

among my generation to find out no-nonsense, accessible, non-

gobbledigook answers to simple

questions about politics. Its a

shame that political education isnt

widespread or easy to access, and

with the most unpredictable election

of all time just weeks away, people

who wouldnt normally bother realise

that their vote will count more than

ever before, and are keen to have their

voice heard.

What unites all of these voter

choice platforms is the fact that their

founders are pretty much doing it

for nothing. Or for everything, if

you consider the very concept of

democracy is at stake. Both Ask Amy

and Vote for Policies crowdfunded to

bring their ideas to life.

This matters as it opens the

debate as to whether people should

be making major decisions about

the countrys future on such an

app, rather than better funded

public political engagement with

young people, Mehta says.

So will tech really change the

outcome of this, or any, election?

Between 30% and 40% of voters

across Switzerland, Finland and the

Netherlands have consulted a VAA

before casting their vote, according to

Vote for Policies research, so this isnt

just a British phenomenon. But back

in 2010 in the UK, users of the Vote

for Policies platform actually came

out as majority Green Party voters

and that clearly didnt translate into

a Green government. Thats despite a

recent poll that found half of its users

said they would change their vote

based on the results generated by the

platform.

END OF SPINIts really reassuring that people

are trying to break through the

spin, branding and PR surrounding

politics and make up their own minds

about what really matters to them,

says Charlotte George, Green Party

candidate for Hackney South and

Shoreditch.

But it will take a while for the

trend to make real inroads and

influence a greater number of people. Also, our current first-past-the-post voting system presents the election

as a two-party race and makes it

difficult for smaller parties to break through. Hopefully a new government,

especially if its another coalition, will

look at our voting system again and

propose a better model.

Politicians often blame voters for

not engaging, we blame the usability

of the system, concludes Chocqueel-

Mangan at Vote for Policies. The

digital sector should be able to play a

role in impacting society. We have the

skills, approach, tools and methods

and politics should learn from them

and help them make a positive

difference.

There are massive social problems

that persist but theres a huge

community of people doing amazing

things with and around tech. They

need rewards and support to show

them its cooler than building another

taxi app. n

This matters as it opens the debate as to whether people should be making major decisions about the countrys future on such an app, rather than better funded public political engagement with young people

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