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I hope not too many people base their voting decision on the amount of similarity they have in their answers with parties. The way questions are phrased do not

I hope not too many people base their voting decision on the amount of similarity they have in their answers with parties. The way questions are phrased do not always give parties a way to answer (Yes/No/Neutral) in the same way. As an example, 2 parties could both say No to a higher Co2-tax, but one of them does so because they claim climate change is a hoax, while the other one has a problem with it not being progressive enough, thus hitting poorer people harder than rich people. Wahlomat is really great for 2 things though: First there are a lot of small parties, and while some of them probably deserve a seat at the table, it would be too much work to read all their programs. Wahlomat gives me the ability to presort some of the smaller parties, read their answers, and then maybe dig into their programs if I found that interesting. The other thing is that Wahlomat is a great discussion starter. A few friends and I first did it all by ourselves, then went through our answers together. My opinion was shifted on a couple of these questions, shifting my overall position a bit, too.

Loic 5y ago
What is also important to state is that the parties can vouch the answers to ensure that the match is correct. I cannot vote because I do not have the citizenship but I went through it and was interestingly surprised by the results. I do agree that it is really a nice conversation starter and can help people who are not sure between one or another.
blowski 5y ago
Great point, well made. I’d argue this is the reason for Burkean democracy, that there are too many questions with too many nuances to reduce it to multiple choice. Instead, you elect a person who you think has good judgement and leave them to do all the thinking on your behalf. But of course this system gets abused, because electors don’t know who they can trust.
- specialist 5y ago
  > the reason for Burkean democracy As David Mayhew has shown, legislative bodies, regardless of country and system, all end up doing kind of the same thing, over the long haul. The Imprint of Congress https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=394KcetPJHY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=394KcetPJHY That seems about right to me. Over time, I increasingly consider policy work and parliamentary work as separate jobs. (Campaigning and governing are yet other distinct jobs.) Policy work is the discussion, lobbying, discourse, rhetoric, etc. Culture and consensus. Whatever that is. Parliamentary work is the knife fight around the implementation. Winners and losers, struggle for power, who gets how much cake and ice cream.
_ph_ 5y ago
Another problem is, that currently most parties are claiming to care all about the climate and would immediately take steps to fight the climate change after the election. Just if two of those parties have been in power for the last 8 years, you might want to weight their statement accordingly :)
- Helmut10001 5y ago
  Correct, there is a big difference to what is "said" and what is "done". There is no measurement in the Wahlomat that compares previous goals and success rates (e.g. for those parties who were in the coalition that ruled the last 20 years). Perhaps this can be best framed under the term "trustworthiness". But it also somehow applies to other parties: AfD has a pretty low trustworthiness because their goals and actions are often entirely contradictory - e.g. in their election program, they say they are for "transparency", but their party financing is the most intransparent of all.
- michaelt 5y ago
  Theoretically, a party could recognise something is needed during their first term, but feel they don't have a mandate from the voters until they've successfully been elected with it as one of their policies. For example, if I was elected saying the tax on beer should be lower, but having met with health experts I've changed my mind and think it should be higher. Of course, a cynic would say that's just an excuse for delaying, and a trick to play both sides...
  - Uke 5y ago
    which shouldn't be a problem if you were transparent about meeting with said experts (name them) and explain your change of mind accordingly.
    - michaelt 5y ago
      You might applaud me for changing my opinion when I learned new facts. But your neighbour might see me as a liar, who promised one thing then did the opposite. And your other neighbour might see me as part of a ruling elite that hears a clear statement of will from the people, then ignores it and does the opposite.
MildlySerious 5y ago
This was something that I really noticed this year, not so much in the previous cycles. Maybe because my mind was already made up and the results really didn't reflect my expectations very well. After you get your result, you can see the reasons why every party gave the answers they did, and reading those statements, especially on answer where your party of choice had different answers than your own were very insightful. I somehow doubt that too many people will put that much effort into it, though. One question where this really stuck out to me was on a speed limit on all highways. One party that I am interested in gave the same answer I did, but their reasoning was superficial and shortsighted. Another small party gave the opposite answer but gave a fairly nuanced and convincing explanation on why they think a policy like that is incomplete. Comparing the two, the former just sounded like political pandering and I very much hope enough people see through this and don't just give their votes to the top score.
- Certhas 5y ago
  The thing is, for people for whom going through the one paragraph of reasoning the parties actually give is too much, what better alternative is there? Given the alternatives: Vote by personality vs vote by Wahl-o-mat score, I would 100% of the time encourage people to vote by Wahl-o-mat score.
  - namibj 5y ago
    You can change your priorities there, and compare the opinions of multiple candidate parties on these ones if needed.
fjh 5y ago
> As an example, 2 parties could both say No to a higher Co2-tax, but one of them does so because they claim climate change is a hoax, while the other one has a problem with it not being progressive enough, thus hitting poorer people harder than rich people. But as a voter who is in favour of a higher CO2 tax, why would you care about that distinction? If there's one party who thinks climate change doesn't exist and one who believes in climate change but is unwilling to do anything about it, the only difference between the parties is in their rhetoric. I'd argue that voting based on actual policy proposals a benefit, not a drawback of this approach.
- TonyTrapp 5y ago
  > But as a voter who is in favour of a higher CO2 tax, why would you care about that distinction? You cannot find a party that you agree with 100%. If you have to choose the lesser evil, you may still want to check why exactly a party disagrees with you.
- dmurray 5y ago
  > If there's one party who thinks climate change doesn't exist and one who believes in climate change but is unwilling to do anything about it That's obviously not the distinction between the parties here. The second one intends (or at least has a policy to) do something about it, but just not by raising the existing CO2 tax. Maybe instead they intend to raise the top rate of income tax and increase subsidies for public transport. If you incorporated all of the parties policies into the Wahl-O-Mat, that would all come out in the wash and you'd end up with your preferred party, but also you might abandon the process because it's taking too long. The challenge is to distil the parties' policies into a reasonable subset that accurately captures the differences between them, some kind of principal component analysis.
  - fjh 5y ago
    > That's obviously not the distinction between the parties here. The second one intends (or at least has a policy to) do something about it, but just not by raising the existing CO2 tax. Do they, though? I don't know how familiar you are with the German political parties, but the concern about climate change is mostly empty marketing on all sides. We should stop running coal electricity plants, but somehow turning off all nuclear plants immediately is more important. We should stop subsidising driving to work, but that would be regressive etc. Most parties are making noises about climate change being bad, but they're all pretty unwilling to accept any trade-offs involved in doing something about it. I'm saying if you want something effective do be done, look at what the parties are actually proposing to do, not how concerned they're expressing to be in their election flyers.
kohlerm 5y ago
"Funny" fact it seems like the FDP is the party of "no opinion", e.g they are neutral to a lot of questions.
lucumo 5y ago
The Dutch Stemwijzer tends to have these stupid questions where they put a premise in the question. Something like "We need more red lights in the world, so all traffic lights should include red lights." Two parties can arrive at yes ("traffic lights should include red lights") and no ("we don't need more red lights in the world") as an answer and still have the same opinion ("not more red lights, but traffic lights need to have a red light"). This is a very common type of question in it and it fills me with immense frustration when using the tool. The one redemption it has though, is that it allow parties to explain their reasoning when giving an answer. That makes a more detailed study of the issues easier. So I generally still spent a while filling it in and studying the answers. (And then go vote the same way I always do... I find that I rarely care about the current political talking points and much more about the unexpected things that will come up in the coming years. For that you need someone that is trustworthy and has a similar ideology, not a party program.)
m_mueller 5y ago
we had exactly this issue with a direct democratic CO2 tax plan vote in Switzerland. most of the No's came from young voters that apparently thought it's not going far enough. IMO people who think like this are just as much a part of the problem like those who ignore the issue. When you get to vote for an improvement, even if it's not ideal, you should take it.
- happymellon 5y ago
  We had a similar issue in the UK with our actual voting system switching to AV. Either it would kill babies or it wasn't going far enough and our chance of iterating improvements to our system were squashed, just like that.
fxtentacle 5y ago
I'd say the election is still very emotional because people don't know if they can trust those statements. Many young people were upset when upload filters were introduced after the politicians responsible had explicitly and publicly promised that there wouldn't be any. Many old people were upset by the amount of corruption happening recently, from overpriced covid masks to 700 mio Eur in non-refundable deposit payments for a software project which was ultimately scrapped before it ever started. And then there's the aspect that parties which have been in power for a long time and reduced support and subsidies for solar and wind energy are listed as caring about the climate. That's because this table purely summarizes what parties have said they plan to do. But there is no reality check.
- aqsalose 5y ago
  >Many young people were upset when upload filters were introduced after the politicians responsible had explicitly and publicly promised that there wouldn't be any. I beg your pardon, upload filters?
  - hobofan 5y ago
    Yes: https://www.euractiv.com/section/copyright/news/german-copyright-bill-includes-upload-filters-despite-governments-promises/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/copyright/news/german-copyr...
- antman 5y ago
  Interesting the 700mil Eur scrapped software project. Any links, non german if possible?
  - fxtentacle 5y ago
    Didn't find an English one. But Google Translate is OK on this one: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://fragdenstaat.de/blog/2020/05/18/wir-veroffentlichen-geheimvertrag-zu-pkw-maut/ https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...
ud_0 5y ago
Wahlomat was a great starting point for me as someone who is not up-to-date on current party agendas. However, its weakness is that it breaks down answers into yes/no options. For me there were lots of items that required more than that (for example: I was looking for parties who reject the premise of a given question - I would have loved a graphical indicator for those cases). But I have to say, drilling down to get that information was not only possible with the website but was easier than hunting for a given stance on a party's website. The structural problem (or feature) in Germany is that voting for a party who is not expected to pass 5% in total votes is basically the same as not voting at all. For me as a holder of niche opinions, this is inconvenient. Of course, everybody knows this feature exists to prevent the recurrence of a Weimar Republic-style desaster. I do wish we (Western-style democracies in general) would make more use of direct democratic measures. Barring that, I would absolutely love to give my mandate to several parties in different areas (for example, give my mandate to the Pirate Party on IP matters, but give it to someone else on social policy).
- soco 5y ago
  I would always assume that when a single-issue party gets elected, they would push mostly on that issue. Because if someone sympathizes with the Pirates, they do because of the core message, not because of their social policies (which any party is required to answer but some care less)
  - gurkendoktor 5y ago
    Speaking of the German Pirate Party, I found it interesting that I haven't seen a single election poster about technology or direct democracy this year. The ones I saw were exclusively about the 1.5° climate goal, the gender wage gap, and another social topic that I forgot. Not sure if that's an actual strategy, or just the preferred way to empty their wallets while they have no chance to cross the frustrating 5% firewall anyway.
    - soco 5y ago
      If they would have continued on their defining issue, maybe the 5% could have been attained, because privacy and security scandals to bank on are a-plenty. Oh well.
specialist 5y ago
TLDR: That discourse with your friends IS democracy. We need more of it. Ya. Platforms are just one facet of the full package. I've participated in politics in the USA. One fascinating part is the endorsement process. My local party is one of remaining orgs that does rigorous endorsements. Fewer orgs do it over time, tracking with the decline of local (political) news and rise in campaign spending (drowning out all other signals). Some other tenacious orgs still doing endorsement processes are League of Women Voters, Urban League, Municipal League, League of Conservation Voters, NARAL, most unions, Chambers of Commerce, etc. Every org does their own thing; so this inside baseball game is a whole 'nother world of politics. It's a lot of work, for all involved. Candidates seeking our endorsement fill out surveys. This is above and beyond their public platform (position) statements. Some of our questions are deal breakers, where candidates have to abide by our bylaws and positions, by design. Candidates are rarely blank slates. We also research their past voting, activities, where they get their funding, and so forth. Then we do endorsement interviews. Every one gets the same prepared, canned questions (for fairness). Every single election cycle, at least one of our interviews makes the local news. So it's clearly impactful. During our deliberations, we also consider candidate's campaigns and reputations. We have a heavy bias towards people who play ball, gets things done, are effective. In other words, we're not much interested in someone who agrees with us 100%, but is unlikely to attain our policy goals.
riedel 5y ago
Wahlomat seems like yet another way of trying in to reduce complexities. The explanations given by Die PARTEI nicely highlight to that it might be good to look at the rationale behind the answers. In general I find the current election campaigns and media coverage rather intellectually offending. I guess it hard to blame the wahlomat for choice topics, that appear throughout the party programs. One fun fact is that according to a recent study by an economic think tank none of the major party programs if implemented would be enough to reach the Paris climate goals. I highly doubt if any combination or even worse compromise would.

Loic 5y ago

What is also important to state is that the parties can vouch the answers to ensure that the match is correct. I cannot vote because I do not have the citizenship but I went through it and was interestingly surprised by the results. I do agree that it is really a nice conversation starter and can help people who are not sure between one or another.

blowski 5y ago

Great point, well made. I’d argue this is the reason for Burkean democracy, that there are too many questions with too many nuances to reduce it to multiple choice. Instead, you elect a person who you think has good judgement and leave them to do all the thinking on your behalf. But of course this system gets abused, because electors don’t know who they can trust.

specialist 5y ago
> the reason for Burkean democracy As David Mayhew has shown, legislative bodies, regardless of country and system, all end up doing kind of the same thing, over the long haul. The Imprint of Congress https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=394KcetPJHY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=394KcetPJHY That seems about right to me. Over time, I increasingly consider policy work and parliamentary work as separate jobs. (Campaigning and governing are yet other distinct jobs.) Policy work is the discussion, lobbying, discourse, rhetoric, etc. Culture and consensus. Whatever that is. Parliamentary work is the knife fight around the implementation. Winners and losers, struggle for power, who gets how much cake and ice cream.

_ph_ 5y ago

Another problem is, that currently most parties are claiming to care all about the climate and would immediately take steps to fight the climate change after the election. Just if two of those parties have been in power for the last 8 years, you might want to weight their statement accordingly :)

Helmut10001 5y ago
Correct, there is a big difference to what is "said" and what is "done". There is no measurement in the Wahlomat that compares previous goals and success rates (e.g. for those parties who were in the coalition that ruled the last 20 years). Perhaps this can be best framed under the term "trustworthiness". But it also somehow applies to other parties: AfD has a pretty low trustworthiness because their goals and actions are often entirely contradictory - e.g. in their election program, they say they are for "transparency", but their party financing is the most intransparent of all.
michaelt 5y ago
Theoretically, a party could recognise something is needed during their first term, but feel they don't have a mandate from the voters until they've successfully been elected with it as one of their policies. For example, if I was elected saying the tax on beer should be lower, but having met with health experts I've changed my mind and think it should be higher. Of course, a cynic would say that's just an excuse for delaying, and a trick to play both sides...
- Uke 5y ago
  which shouldn't be a problem if you were transparent about meeting with said experts (name them) and explain your change of mind accordingly.
  - michaelt 5y ago
    You might applaud me for changing my opinion when I learned new facts. But your neighbour might see me as a liar, who promised one thing then did the opposite. And your other neighbour might see me as part of a ruling elite that hears a clear statement of will from the people, then ignores it and does the opposite.

MildlySerious 5y ago

This was something that I really noticed this year, not so much in the previous cycles. Maybe because my mind was already made up and the results really didn't reflect my expectations very well. After you get your result, you can see the reasons why every party gave the answers they did, and reading those statements, especially on answer where your party of choice had different answers than your own were very insightful. I somehow doubt that too many people will put that much effort into it, though. One question where this really stuck out to me was on a speed limit on all highways. One party that I am interested in gave the same answer I did, but their reasoning was superficial and shortsighted. Another small party gave the opposite answer but gave a fairly nuanced and convincing explanation on why they think a policy like that is incomplete. Comparing the two, the former just sounded like political pandering and I very much hope enough people see through this and don't just give their votes to the top score.

Certhas 5y ago
The thing is, for people for whom going through the one paragraph of reasoning the parties actually give is too much, what better alternative is there? Given the alternatives: Vote by personality vs vote by Wahl-o-mat score, I would 100% of the time encourage people to vote by Wahl-o-mat score.
- namibj 5y ago
  You can change your priorities there, and compare the opinions of multiple candidate parties on these ones if needed.

fjh 5y ago

> As an example, 2 parties could both say No to a higher Co2-tax, but one of them does so because they claim climate change is a hoax, while the other one has a problem with it not being progressive enough, thus hitting poorer people harder than rich people. But as a voter who is in favour of a higher CO2 tax, why would you care about that distinction? If there's one party who thinks climate change doesn't exist and one who believes in climate change but is unwilling to do anything about it, the only difference between the parties is in their rhetoric. I'd argue that voting based on actual policy proposals a benefit, not a drawback of this approach.

TonyTrapp 5y ago
> But as a voter who is in favour of a higher CO2 tax, why would you care about that distinction? You cannot find a party that you agree with 100%. If you have to choose the lesser evil, you may still want to check why exactly a party disagrees with you.
dmurray 5y ago
> If there's one party who thinks climate change doesn't exist and one who believes in climate change but is unwilling to do anything about it That's obviously not the distinction between the parties here. The second one intends (or at least has a policy to) do something about it, but just not by raising the existing CO2 tax. Maybe instead they intend to raise the top rate of income tax and increase subsidies for public transport. If you incorporated all of the parties policies into the Wahl-O-Mat, that would all come out in the wash and you'd end up with your preferred party, but also you might abandon the process because it's taking too long. The challenge is to distil the parties' policies into a reasonable subset that accurately captures the differences between them, some kind of principal component analysis.
- fjh 5y ago
  > That's obviously not the distinction between the parties here. The second one intends (or at least has a policy to) do something about it, but just not by raising the existing CO2 tax. Do they, though? I don't know how familiar you are with the German political parties, but the concern about climate change is mostly empty marketing on all sides. We should stop running coal electricity plants, but somehow turning off all nuclear plants immediately is more important. We should stop subsidising driving to work, but that would be regressive etc. Most parties are making noises about climate change being bad, but they're all pretty unwilling to accept any trade-offs involved in doing something about it. I'm saying if you want something effective do be done, look at what the parties are actually proposing to do, not how concerned they're expressing to be in their election flyers.

kohlerm 5y ago

"Funny" fact it seems like the FDP is the party of "no opinion", e.g they are neutral to a lot of questions.

lucumo 5y ago

The Dutch Stemwijzer tends to have these stupid questions where they put a premise in the question. Something like "We need more red lights in the world, so all traffic lights should include red lights." Two parties can arrive at yes ("traffic lights should include red lights") and no ("we don't need more red lights in the world") as an answer and still have the same opinion ("not more red lights, but traffic lights need to have a red light"). This is a very common type of question in it and it fills me with immense frustration when using the tool. The one redemption it has though, is that it allow parties to explain their reasoning when giving an answer. That makes a more detailed study of the issues easier. So I generally still spent a while filling it in and studying the answers. (And then go vote the same way I always do... I find that I rarely care about the current political talking points and much more about the unexpected things that will come up in the coming years. For that you need someone that is trustworthy and has a similar ideology, not a party program.)

m_mueller 5y ago

we had exactly this issue with a direct democratic CO2 tax plan vote in Switzerland. most of the No's came from young voters that apparently thought it's not going far enough. IMO people who think like this are just as much a part of the problem like those who ignore the issue. When you get to vote for an improvement, even if it's not ideal, you should take it.

happymellon 5y ago
We had a similar issue in the UK with our actual voting system switching to AV. Either it would kill babies or it wasn't going far enough and our chance of iterating improvements to our system were squashed, just like that.

fxtentacle 5y ago

I'd say the election is still very emotional because people don't know if they can trust those statements. Many young people were upset when upload filters were introduced after the politicians responsible had explicitly and publicly promised that there wouldn't be any. Many old people were upset by the amount of corruption happening recently, from overpriced covid masks to 700 mio Eur in non-refundable deposit payments for a software project which was ultimately scrapped before it ever started. And then there's the aspect that parties which have been in power for a long time and reduced support and subsidies for solar and wind energy are listed as caring about the climate. That's because this table purely summarizes what parties have said they plan to do. But there is no reality check.

aqsalose 5y ago
>Many young people were upset when upload filters were introduced after the politicians responsible had explicitly and publicly promised that there wouldn't be any. I beg your pardon, upload filters?
- hobofan 5y ago
  Yes: https://www.euractiv.com/section/copyright/news/german-copyright-bill-includes-upload-filters-despite-governments-promises/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/copyright/news/german-copyr...
antman 5y ago
Interesting the 700mil Eur scrapped software project. Any links, non german if possible?
- fxtentacle 5y ago
  Didn't find an English one. But Google Translate is OK on this one: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://fragdenstaat.de/blog/2020/05/18/wir-veroffentlichen-geheimvertrag-zu-pkw-maut/ https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...

ud_0 5y ago

Wahlomat was a great starting point for me as someone who is not up-to-date on current party agendas. However, its weakness is that it breaks down answers into yes/no options. For me there were lots of items that required more than that (for example: I was looking for parties who reject the premise of a given question - I would have loved a graphical indicator for those cases). But I have to say, drilling down to get that information was not only possible with the website but was easier than hunting for a given stance on a party's website. The structural problem (or feature) in Germany is that voting for a party who is not expected to pass 5% in total votes is basically the same as not voting at all. For me as a holder of niche opinions, this is inconvenient. Of course, everybody knows this feature exists to prevent the recurrence of a Weimar Republic-style desaster. I do wish we (Western-style democracies in general) would make more use of direct democratic measures. Barring that, I would absolutely love to give my mandate to several parties in different areas (for example, give my mandate to the Pirate Party on IP matters, but give it to someone else on social policy).

soco 5y ago
I would always assume that when a single-issue party gets elected, they would push mostly on that issue. Because if someone sympathizes with the Pirates, they do because of the core message, not because of their social policies (which any party is required to answer but some care less)
- gurkendoktor 5y ago
  Speaking of the German Pirate Party, I found it interesting that I haven't seen a single election poster about technology or direct democracy this year. The ones I saw were exclusively about the 1.5° climate goal, the gender wage gap, and another social topic that I forgot. Not sure if that's an actual strategy, or just the preferred way to empty their wallets while they have no chance to cross the frustrating 5% firewall anyway.
  - soco 5y ago
    If they would have continued on their defining issue, maybe the 5% could have been attained, because privacy and security scandals to bank on are a-plenty. Oh well.

specialist 5y ago

TLDR: That discourse with your friends IS democracy. We need more of it. Ya. Platforms are just one facet of the full package. I've participated in politics in the USA. One fascinating part is the endorsement process. My local party is one of remaining orgs that does rigorous endorsements. Fewer orgs do it over time, tracking with the decline of local (political) news and rise in campaign spending (drowning out all other signals). Some other tenacious orgs still doing endorsement processes are League of Women Voters, Urban League, Municipal League, League of Conservation Voters, NARAL, most unions, Chambers of Commerce, etc. Every org does their own thing; so this inside baseball game is a whole 'nother world of politics. It's a lot of work, for all involved. Candidates seeking our endorsement fill out surveys. This is above and beyond their public platform (position) statements. Some of our questions are deal breakers, where candidates have to abide by our bylaws and positions, by design. Candidates are rarely blank slates. We also research their past voting, activities, where they get their funding, and so forth. Then we do endorsement interviews. Every one gets the same prepared, canned questions (for fairness). Every single election cycle, at least one of our interviews makes the local news. So it's clearly impactful. During our deliberations, we also consider candidate's campaigns and reputations. We have a heavy bias towards people who play ball, gets things done, are effective. In other words, we're not much interested in someone who agrees with us 100%, but is unlikely to attain our policy goals.

riedel 5y ago

Wahlomat seems like yet another way of trying in to reduce complexities. The explanations given by Die PARTEI nicely highlight to that it might be good to look at the rationale behind the answers. In general I find the current election campaigns and media coverage rather intellectually offending. I guess it hard to blame the wahlomat for choice topics, that appear throughout the party programs. One fun fact is that according to a recent study by an economic think tank none of the major party programs if implemented would be enough to reach the Paris climate goals. I highly doubt if any combination or even worse compromise would.