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Herald: Welcome to the hackrf channel. Today under the title Patching Democracy.
Today we're talking about the era of digitalization, as well as about the
understanding of the enormous importance of digital tools in both private and
public life, because we need it to reduce the world's complexity to an amount that
we can actually handle. This is something that is very important, for example, in
democracies. Especially when talking about decision making, like for example, the
voting advice application that we have in Germany, the Wahl-o-mat is a very good
example of making parties comparable to common people all over the place. But
those machines are like those Wahl-o-mats are very expensive and thus they are only
available for larger elections. And this is a problem that is actually handleable.
This is what Till Sander does with his voting advice application that is
called... wait a second
with his open election compass and he actually was approached by the
small city of Lüdenscheid to develop something that could actually do something
that the Wahl-o-mat also does. And when he found out that this is actually something
that needs to be provided also for smaller elections and that is actually affordable,
he is actually a web designer, decided to do it in a bigger way. So he wanted to
make it open source and thus created this platform that he now talks about in his
lecture that we provide to you right now. You can also ask questions that will be
answered in the following Q&A and on Twitter, as well as on the IRC. Under the
hashtag rc3hacc and the channel rc3-hacc. Now enjoy the talk.
Till Sanders: Welcome to Patching Democracy. This is a short introduction to
applications like the German Wahl-o-mat and why we might not need to hack
democracy. In this talk, I will demonstrate how we can improve elections
and political education everywhere, thanks to free and open source software.
Researchers of the Friedrich-Ebert- Foundation found that only a third of the
population believes in a brighter future. Less than half of our society is satisfied
with how our democracy works. In parts of Germany, this drops even further to about
a third. Even worse, three out of four Germans feel like politicians don't care
about their concerns. And lastly, many people even agree that it doesn't make a
difference which parties form the government. Studies like these question
the state our democracy is in. Is our democracy broken? Let's take a look at
some other results of the same study. Only 1.3 % want an authoritative figure with
extensive powers to make the law. With the rise of the extreme right this is a good
thing. While 88% of us think that politicians make more promises than they
can keep, the majority acknowledges that politicians do have a difficult job. And
out of several problems, a great majority identified a lack of participation in
elections as the biggest problem. Our democracy generally fails to make everyone
happy and to be fair, that's somewhat the point. But while many people have issues
with our democracy, they also seem to believe that it is still the way to go.
Democracy is not broken. It is just our implementation of it that is experiencing
technical difficulties. Hi, my name is Till, and I'm here to fix this. Not alone,
of course, but I'm happy to be, you know, someone just doing what he knows best and
I like all those numbers might suggest I'm not even a political scientist. I'm, in
fact a designer and web developer. And as such what I enjoy most is the challenge of
making complex concepts easily accessible, preferably with beautiful user interfaces.
I'd like to first introduce you to the idea and short history of voting advice
applications. We will then dig in a little deeper and establish important principles
that make VAAs successful. There's also going to be a little hands on with the
FOSS project I have developed in the last year. Once I've shown you the tools, I'll
talk about how you can run your own election compass and what to consider when
doing so. And off we go! Our story begins in the Netherlands. In 1989, the Dutch
Citizenship Foundation, the documentation center of Dutch political parties and the
faculty of Political Management of the University of Twente start a collaboration
to develop the Stemwijzer. A booklet containing 60 statements found in the
programs of political parties and a diskette. Well, it's 1989. The idea proves
popular and evolves to the first Internet election compass for the Dutch
parliamentary elections in 1998. Although the project can only attract 6500 voters,
subsequent implementations in 2002 and 2003 attract about 2 million voters, which
quickly become 5 million voters in 2006, which is about a third of the entire Dutch
population. Success began spreading to other countries, the first election
compass I myself ever came across was the German Wahl-o-mat, based on the StemWijzer
itself, the Federal Agency for Civic Education, the BPB, released the first
Wahl-o-mat in 2002. It's fair to say that the VAA concept is now well-established in
Germany and other countries. Usage in Germany has increased to 33% of cast votes
in 2017. Think about that for a moment. One in three voters has used the Wahl-o-
mat at some point before going to the ballot. As software projects of the German
government go, this might well be the most successful yet, doubly so if you consider
the costs of some spectacular failures in the past. So what did the first voting
advice applications actually look like? Let's take a look at the first Wahl-o-mat
from nearly two decades ago. The Internet was quite different back in those days.
Many user interface patterns were yet to be discovered or refined and users were
less experienced. On a side note. Technically, this website from 18 years
ago still runs perfectly fine in a modern day browser. Web technologies are amazing.
Anyway, despite these slight difficulties and the Wahl-o-mat being a new concept,
there are very few instructions. This is because the core concept was and still is
incredibly simple. You are presented with a sequence of statements or a thesis. You
can choose to approve or reject or remain neutral to a thesis. If you don't really
understand the meaning or the issue behind it, you can also skip a thesis. After
about 30 statements, you can choose categories that are more important to you,
so they are counting double. The political parties or candidates answer the same
theses. At the end your answers are compared to those of the parties showing
you potential matches. Fast forward to today. The idea is about 30 years old now.
In this time it spread not only to Germany but also to Belgium, Finland, Denmark,
Portugal, Norway, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland and many other countries,
continents even. The teams behind StemWijzer inspired most European
countries and others around the world.
Let's talk about VAAs in more depth. What
are they actually good for? Why do people use them? How do their mechanisms work and
does their popularity make them dangerous? So what do we actually want to achieve?
What is the purpose of voting advice applications? Since their inception, the
target group are actually young, even first-time voters. I guess the reasoning
behind this is that the older people get the more experienced they are with the
political landscape, or at least they should be. The term voting advice
application suggests that the purpose is to advise users on who to vote for. Now, I
must say, I've been struggling with this name. I find it counterintuitive because
from what I've seen, this is actually not the purpose of these projects. And that's
good because imagine for a second what this would mean. Many VAAs are designed
and controlled by government agencies. So who would want to live in a democracy
where the government gives you advice on who to vote for in the election? So
although it's called a voting advice application, the Wahl-o-mat does not
actually want to give you advice. It's even written there on the very first page,
right above the start button. The Wahl-o- mat is not voting advice, but an offer of
information about elections and politics. I found this disclaimer in every VAA I
have come across so far. OK, so the purpose of VAAs is, despite their name,
not to give voting advice. Good. Except, they kind of do, don't they? We don't give
you any advice well, we do, but don't take our word for it. We've warned you not to
take this as an advice. Now go ahead and get not-an-advice. Maybe it's just me, but
I think this is quite german. VAAs have a positive impact on political education.
This might be the main aspect, they have originally been designed for. VAAs want to
have a positive impact on political education. As I understand it, this topic
sadly needs more research. But with the research done so far, we can assume that
this is indeed the case. It appears to be uncertain to what extent exactly, and this
will also depend on the individual VAA. But there is a positive impact. VAAs do
not improve the knowledge about political structures like how the ballot works, how
the allotment of seats in parliament works, etc. But they can improve knowledge
about the policy issues, what the upcoming election is about, what parties there are,
and where the parties stand. VAAs also lead to discussions about these issues and
parties which can also improve political knowledge in peer groups. So as far as we
know today, this claim is true and it is an important benefit of election compasses
or VAAs, because as research shows, most people in Germany are able to place
parties on the spectrum of left and right correctly. But at the same time, many
people are unable to place parties correctly when it comes to policy issues.
So missing political knowledge and misinformation can actually lead to people
voting against their own interests. VAAs promote electoral participation. What
makes people vote? To answer this question, we can take a look at the
reasons why some people don't. And one of the main reasons why some people don't
vote is because they don't feel like their position is reflected by any of the
existing parties. Our political system is complex and our political landscape, our
parties and their programs doubly so. People that have a better understanding
and more knowledge of the choices they have… are more likely to cast a vote. Just
imagine you're helping a friend who has no clue about computers decide on a graphics
card. They either get confused as hell very quickly or they be like, well, I
don't know, do I even need one? My laptop runs fine and it doesn't have one. Can we
get pizza now? You see, being able to make an informed decision can make a huge
difference. And VAAs can help with that. And research tells us that VAA users can
be 2% to 12% more likely to go to the ballot. The last important background
topic I would like to touch on is the matching algorithm. These algorithms are
still subject to debate and some are frequently criticized. I'll spare you the
history, and instead will jump right in because, one, this topic deserves a talk
of its own. And two, that talk should not be held by me. But I'll share with you
what I know. The matching algorithm is responsible for calculating your result.
After you answered all the theses, your answers are compared to those of the
parties. The parties get more points the more you agree with them. Sounds simple?
But how do you calculate this exactly? Say we have an agreement scale of 10 to -10. I
reply to a different thesis with an agreement of 3. Party A is even more into
this and goes for 9. Party B is not a fan of this thesis and answers with -3. How
many points will Party A and B get for this thesis? There are two approaches to
this. The first has been coined the proximity model, and as the term suggests,
it focuses on the distance between two points. In this case, Party A and Party B
are the same distance to my answer, so they will get the same amount of points.
Seems logical at first, but is this really the best approach to this? I might not
fully agree with Party A, but I am on the same side, whereas party B is on the other
side. Wouldn't it be safe to assume that party A is a better match for me? Well,
probably, yes. The idea is called the directional model. It awards more points
if the voter and the party go in the same direction. In our scenario, party A will
receive more points than party B because it is on the same side as I am. Following
these models, one can easily create a matching algorithm. Why not all VAAs make
their algorithm's public, there are a few well known ones. The first is the famous
city block algorithm. It belongs to the proximity model and is still used by the
Wahl-o-mat albeit with only three options, which has been criticized in the past. In
this chart, you can see the users answer in the rows and the party's answer in the
columns. In this area where they meet, you'll find the score for this thesis. For
example, if I choose to strongly approve the thesis, I'm in the first row. If the
party agrees with that we meet in the first cell and the party gets the maximum
score of 1 for this thesis. If the party, however, rejects the thesis, 1st row, 4th
column, it will only get a score of -5. You see, the city block algorithm strictly
follows the proximity model: the closer user and party become, the higher the
score. The classic example of the direction and what is the scalar
algorithm, the direction or side is far more important here and a party cannot
receive a positive score as long as it is on the other side of the user's opinion.
Note also that this must mean that if either the user or the party choose a
neutral position, the score will always be zero. So why both algorithms have their
strengths, our goal is to find a model, thats prediction is as close as possible
to what the user votes for in the end. And there's another group of algorithms that
tend to yield better results. I'm talking about hybrid algorithms that try to
combine the approaches of the proximity and directional model. As you can see,
proximity as well as direction play a role in the scoring. Looking at the colors, you
can see that this now looks a bit like the first algorithm, the city block algorithm,
but the green line fades a little in the center. This is the influence of the
scalar algorithm focusing on the direction. So which one is best? I'm
afraid we don't know for sure. As always, data will tell. It also depends on your
intentions and design choices. What we do know is that algorithms based on the
proximity model tend to favor temperate parties, while those based on their
directional model gently pushes users to the extreme ends. Considering this, hybrid
algorithms should yield more balanced results. We must not forget, though, that
at the end of the day they are still only models, so don't expect any of them to be
incredibly accurate. The OpenElectionCompass is a free and open source software
with a simple mission: making voting advice applications available to every
election to support political education and democracy everywhere. Running your own
election compass can be a costly endeavor. No more. With the OpenElectionCompass, we
have a system that is free, transparent, user friendly and accessible. Unlike
agencies who only run an election compass every few years, a project like this can
focus on continuous improvement. But enough promises. Let's take a look at the
features. The OpenElectionCompass was designed to be easy to use and accessible.
The design is minimalistic, so users are not distracted. Unlike solutions like the
Wahl-o-mat, it makes use of the available screen size with big theses and buttons.
Clear color coding provides visual feedback, and as you can see, the
navigation is not based on previous next buttons, but scrolling. This is quicker
and far more intuitive, especially on mobile devices. To make this experience
even smoother, a big, friendly green button helps guide the user through the
entire process. Whenever it's time to move on, it just pops up ready to take you to
the next step. The OpenElectionCompass is the first VAA software to pioneer this
navigation concept. With great success, I might add. Everything you're seeing here
is also screen reader and keyboard friendly. These things get easily
overlooked. But as I said, being a continuous project, we can focus on
important details like these. After we have finished with the thesis, we are
guided to the selection of the parties. Notice that unlike most VAA's, there's no
additional step here where we would be asked to select some theses that are more
important to us. This is another way OpenElectionCompass is improving and
speeding up the process. We are removing the cognitive overhead of going through
all these theses again. Instead, you can mark the thesis as important, right while
you're answering. Usability wise, this makes a lot more sense. But back to the
parties. We simply select the parties we would like to compare. Again, keyboard and
screen reader friendly, and proceed to the results. Here we have the classic
percentage based result view. With most VAAs, this is pretty much it. Usually you
can go into the thesis one by one and see the statements of the parties, but I
believe this is the most important part and should not be hidden away. Showing
these statements should be the default. So I made it the default, when we scroll
further, we can read the answers of all selected parties in an easy, color coded,
chat like format. And that's it. A simple to use, accessible, beautiful state of the
art and free voting advice application. Now comes my favorite part. How do you get
all this content, theses, the parties, the statements into the OpenElectionCompass?
Well, of course, by using a big JSON configuration file, that's hardly
exciting, but you know what, JSON is simple, but for a non-programmer, this is
a pretty daunting task. And even for programmers working with big JSON files to
manage content in multiple languages is not something particularly fun. Especially
if it involves countless emails back and forth to incorporate small changes. So
guess what? There's a tool for that. Now everyone can read and write the JSON
configuration files using a friendly visual editor called the configuration
editor. It makes adding parties, thesis, and statements a breeze. Simply fill in
the forms and download your ready to go configuration file. It even supports
adding every content in multiple languages and handles images for you. There is 100%
feature parity between the configuration files and the editor. And while this is
only the first step in making the creation of VAAs more accessible, it is a big step
up from any other tool. And there's more. Let me introduce some of the smaller
features that make the OpenElectionCompass special. I really want to make
this technology accessible for everyone, so I took the time to create a single file
deployment solution that would fit the software, your content and images, all in
a single HTML file. Is that the most performant solution? No, but let's be
reasonable. It's perfectly fine for a small town – Definitions: Theses must be
short and precise. Sometimes this makes it difficult for users to understand them
because of words or abbreviations they might not know. To help with this, you can
easily provide small helpers – Solid navigation: As we have seen, the one page
design approach comes with lots of benefits. To make sure no one gets annoyed
by too much scrolling around, an intelligent menu is always right at hand.
That and the big green button helps getting around and no time at all.
Multilingual: The OpenElectionCompass has been multilingual since the very
beginning, and not just the interface, no. You can easily provide theses and answers,
everything in multiple languages, even though this is not a big issue in Germany,
I was thinking about countries like Switzerland where this can be essentially
really – Kiosk mode: You can set up a terminal in a public place and put your
election compass in kiosk mode, this mode will ask users nicely to reset the
application once they are done or will do so automatically after a period of
inactivity. Algorithms: The OpenElectionCompass has a flexible
matching implementation that allows it to support different answer styles and
algorithms. Because we don't know what might be the best fit for you. Privacy first
statistics: The OpenElectionCompass now comes with an integrated tool to collect
statistics in a privacy first design. Users can opt in to submit their answers
anonymously for research. They can also help to improve the quality of the data
set by answering more questions regarding their age, gender, education and more.
I know that this is a difficult topic, so I am taking extra care to get this
right. We certainly don't want to become a privacy nightmare. We want to help people
support science in the most privacy caring way possible. By now, you probably want
to get started building your own election compass. Next up, DIY. There are a number
of principles when creating a VAA, written down in the Lausanne declaration. If you
want to run your own election compass, I encourage you to read it. It's not even
long. Let's go over the most important points quickly. In order to contribute
sustainably to the good functioning of democracy, VAAs should be open,
transparent, impartial and methodologically sound. This is important
because if you're not transparent, there's a good chance that some people or even
parties try to deny your legitimacy or impartiality. You should really follow the
approach: We have nothing to fear because we have nothing to hide. A VAA should be
freely accessible to all citizens. This is fairly obvious, but anyway, make sure that
your VAA does not require any form of payment. This could be the paywall of a
media outlet you've partnered with for a promotion. But this could also be less
obvious, a mandatory collection of statistics. And lastly, keep in mind that
there are probably more people with disabilities that you might be aware of.
The OpenElectionCompass helps you with that as it provides decent screen reader
support and generally follows accessibility guidelines. But you should
also apply these design principles for any other content you might create around your
VAA. A VAA should aim at the inclusion of as many parties or candidates that are on
the ballot as possible. The criteria for the exclusion of parties and candidates
should be publicly available and justified, and also parties and candidates
should not be excluded from the tour for ideological reasons. I think this might be
the most obvious rule, but also the most important. We want to help voters make
informed choices. So we need as many parties to participate as possible. This
might at times be a little difficult when parties don't want to partake. But more on
that later. VAAs should be designed in a simple and intuitively understandable
manner. OpenElectionCompass, this is the reason why the design of the
OpenElectionCompass is not fancy at all, a bit boring even. Because I genuinely
believe that it's how it's supposed to be. Many designers observe that web interfaces
are starting to look alike too much. And there's some truth to that. But this is
mainly because we have established a number of patterns that just work and are
well known to users. So with OpenElectionCompass, I'm in fact building
upon that. If you want an interface that is usable by as many people as possible.
Boring is better than fancy. This is not art. This is design. The Lausanne declaration
holds ourselves to a high standard, but as the original authors stated, it is
meant as a starting point for discussion. There are a few points I would like
to add. VAAs should collect user data only on an unobtrusive opt in basis, you might
want to collect user data such as visitor statistics, answers and polls. There are
good reasons to do so, but it's only ever happened with a clear opt in solution,
preferably near the end of the election compass. A project like this should not
appear greedy. VAAs should collect user data for science, not for profit. The
collected data should be made publicly available. If you collect statistics in
your VAA, do it for science. Let political scientists handle the methodology and
interpretation, not some newspaper. And after the election is done, make the data
you collected and if possible, your research available for free. VAAs should
collect user data in a way that is not possible, that it is not possible to trace
political opinions back to an individual. If you do collect statistics, make it
impossible to connect answers to a name. Not only for everyone else, but for
yourself. If you want to collect contact information for further research, save it
separately from the user's answers. Users trust the VAA, so be trustworthy. OK, so
where to begin? I prepared instructions how to run your own election compass
consisting of 10 phases. Phase number one: Preparing. Organization, planning and
communication are paramount. Before you do anything else, make sure you're all on the
same page. Do you really want to run an election compass? Who is going to manage
everything? This person doesn't have to, and in fact shouldn't do everything alone.
But it is very beneficial to have a single person feeling responsible that everyone
else completes their assignments on time. Write down your own timeline, get a tool
to organize your team like Kanban board or a To-do-app. Phase number two: your team.
You should never run a VAA all on your own, not just because it's an awful lot of
work and responsibility and requires an extensive skill set, but because it is
nearly impossible to do it in a legitimate way. You want to support the democratic
process, so get a team of experts, advisers and supporters working together.
Start with a list of people. This might include political scientists for advice
and possibly in charge of the theses, the marketing specialists managing your
marketing channels, social media, email, etc. A web developer with technical skills
to get the election Compass online. A media designer, enthusiastic citizens,
people with good connections to the administration, newspapers and other
institutions. Someone with great language skills for wording and spelling. Think of
people that might fit into these positions and contact them. Organize the kickoff
meeting for your entire team to present your project. The plan, the structure, the
timeline. Establish your organization tools and communication channel, get
everyone to work, gather to-dos and assign them and set deadlines. Phase number
three: The parties. It is important to get the parties on board. Normally, one party
alone has no choice but to participate. You wouldn't want to be the only party
missing. But if multiple parties aren't interested, you have a serious problem.
You should not run an election compass with some parties missing. One or two
small parties might be tolerable. You can simply ask for a gathering and give them a
rough idea of what you are planning. At this point, it can be very helpful to
belong to a reputable institution whose invitation cannot easily be refused. Most
of the time, parties should welcome your idea, but be prepared for some persuading
anyways. Phase number four: Preparing the workshop. The theses for your election
compass obviously cannot be written all by yourself. They need to represent the
society as a whole. The choice of theses decides over the quality of your election
compass, you need to get this right. Your theses need to cover the most important
matters for the next legislature. They need to be objective and impartial. The
wording of the thesis has to be simple enough to be understood and to the point.
Take this task seriously, it's the most important and the most difficult. To
achieve theses of good quality you should run a workshop with a sample of your
audience. Gather a group of young, probably first time voters, but if you
like, you can also gather voters of all ages. Make sure the group is representable
for your audience. No gender, race or religion should be excluded obviously. Set
a date and find a large enough room with a projector, send out invitations and gather
replies. Your groups should have about 20 to 30 members. Get the political programs
of all participating parties with the help of your experts, gather topics of
political interest from the programs and newspapers, and sort them into categories
like social environment, work, traffic, infrastructure, energy, economy, finance,
tax, security. You get the gist. This is your workshop material. Now plan the
workshop. Help your group of voters discover the topics and create the theses.
What methods are you going to use? Teachers can be very helpful here. What
materials will you need? Whiteboards, pens, paper, etc. Phase number five: The
theses. Use the topics and information you gathered to conduct your workshop. With
your team and your group of voters. In this workshop, you will create a number of
theses. Most election compasses gather around 50 to even 100 theses for whole
countries at this stage. It will take you a few hours at least. Take care of your
guests with, you know, pauses, lunch, snacks and coffee. Collect all theses in a
list, and don't forget to work on the wording. Now, regarding the theses, there
are some simple rules and some more advanced rules. The simpler ones are
these: Can the thesis be easily understood by everyone? Are there words that
not everyone will know? The OpenElectionCompass can provide hints
on those, for those. Might the wording be biased? Does the wording match your style?
Is this a good length? You know, these kind of simple rules. Now, for
the more advanced rules. It can be quite hard to follow these, but you
should at least try or maybe get some help with these. Advanced rule number one:
Theses should not be about ideological values, but actual political policies.
The first statement is completely vague. Voters cannot get any political knowledge
from this because ideologically they most likely already know where the parties are
standing. What's even worse, voters can interpret this thesis very differently.
So be concrete. Number two: Theses should not be double barreled. It is very easy to
accidentally merge two theses. And that makes them hard to answer. Every thesis
should be about one policy and not mix two or more policies. In this example. Voters
might be OK with soft but not hard drugs. So how are they supposed to answer the
first statement? Focus your theses. Number three: Theses should avoid
quantifications. At first, this thesis looks fine, it's clear and short, but what
if you don't think there should be more surveillance cameras? If I reject this
statement, what does it mean? It could mean that I'm OK with the numbers of
cameras or it could mean that I'm completely against them. It's not clear,
and this makes it hard to match partisan voters. It's often difficult to avoid
quantification, but sometimes it can help to get down to the real issue. And in case
of my hometown, this was that some people don't feel safe in public places at night.
Now it's more of a boolean question, so try to go for these. And number four:
Theses should avoid qualifications as well. This is a bit like the third rule,
only this time we don't merge related theses but add more depth to a thesis by
adding an example. This was taken from the Wahl-o-mat of 2002 and while it was meant
to just be an example, it makes it more difficult both for the voters as well as
the matching algorithm. Voters might support gay marriages, but draw a line
when it comes to adoption. So what do they choose? In this case, it might be helpful
to be more specific or even split this into two separate theses. This brings us
to phase number six: The positions. Now it's time to let the parties answer and
positions themselves. First, decide on the algorithm you want to calculate the
matches with. This will also determine how many possible answers there will be. Send
the theses to every party. You'll want to use an online form or similar, as the task
of collecting all answers can get very tedious. Make also sure to collect the
logos in appropriate quality and give the parties two to three weeks to answer,
depending on your timeline. In the meantime, prepare to publish the election
compass. Contact media outlets and tell them about your story. Contact the
administration and ask them if they're willing to put up a link on their website.
Contact schools, teachers, youth organizations and sport clubs and ask them
if they are willing to share some graphics and a link with their followers once
you're done. Phase number seven: Evaluating the answers. You know, I have a
lot of theses and even more answers. The next step is to select the most important
theses. You can do this in another workshop or on your team. Go through every
thesis and decide whether it should become part of the election compass. Ask
yourselves, is this thesis controversial enough? Is it helpful in telling the
parties apart? At this stage, around 25 to 40 theses remain. Too few, and the results
lose accuracy. Too many, and it would take too long for the voters to process them.
Phase number eight: Time for a test. By now you should have everything you need.
Let's run a test, feed your theses, answers and logos to the configuration
editor to create the configuration file. Try it out, give it to your team and the
people that participated in the workshops. Gather their feedback, make small
adjustments until everything is ready for the big day. Phase number nine: Going
public. About 2 to 3 weeks before the election, you should publish your election
compass. Tell your web developer in advance, and when the election compass is
online, tell everyone. And lastly, Phase number 10: Observe. Everything is up and
running? Good. The only thing left to do now is get your election compass into as
many hands as possible. Be available for questions and feedback from the public,
and then wait for the election. Don't forget to vote yourselves. And when the
election is over, archive the election compass. You can delete it, of course, but
if you can, just keep it online. It can still be a valuable resource of
transparency. If you collected any data for research, make sure to share it with
the word. And lastly, please give back to the OpenElectionCompass, give feedback,
write about it or improve our funding. And here we are, nearly done. Undoubtedly,
there are many issues with democracy. Its implementations are incredibly complex and
nothing that comes out of it is ever perfect. It can be frustratingly slow,
inefficient, intransparent and even counterproductive. But it's also the only
form of government that the majority so far managed to agree upon. And it's also
the only form of government that is evolving continuously. We are right to
criticize the system when it appears to be moving in the wrong direction. But we
should not be tempted to hack our democracy. Hacking the system would mean
bending it to our will. We don't want that and we don't need to. We don't need to
hack a system that has the inherent ability to change. We can, however, try
and fix the flaws, and I believe voting advice applications are a way to start
doing this. A way of patching democracy. Thank you.
Herald: Thank you so much Till Sanders not only for your lecture, but also for
the development of this very useful tool, obviously. We still have some questions
that our community posed on our social media platforms. And I would start with
the first one: Who would be moderating the content in such apps? Like would it be
peer moderated? Would it be state election agency or would it be something like what
kind of moderation would there be? Till: That's a very important question,
actually. Um, so in Germany with the Wahl- o-mat that's made by by the BPB, a
government agency. And they develop it in a workshop like the one that I describe in
the talk together with young first time voters. Because that's their target group.
But apart from that, they obviously have, you know, political scientists, people
who've been doing this for two decades now. And if you want to do it yourself,
you won't have access to these kind of resources. So that can be a problem. And
so far it worked well. We did this in in Münster, Cologne, Bielefeld, and Siegen.
We had a team of political scientists who did this. So they had all the expertize.
And yeah, there's no perfect answer for this. Um, not anyone, not everybody has
these resources. Just try to do it as good as you can and maybe get some contacts who
can help you. And we must not forget it's only for political education, not for
actual voting advice. So it will never be perfect. But to a certain degree that's
OK. Herald: But there is a question that is
kind of subsequently to the previous one: This person is wondering, how do you or
how do we make sure that the data is not corrupted? Like that it's not abused for
political promotion, for example, or something like this. Like they refer to a
big removing of Twitter of 20K fake accounts that did political propaganda in
kinds of millions of tweets. And those were from a couple of countries, which was
discovered in April 2020. So how could one prevent this in a way, or is it like the
same that you already stated concerning the first question?
Till: Yeah, well that's also a problem. It hasn't proven to be a problem so far. So
as far as I know, there has been no case where this happened, but it could
obviously happen. And since my tool and a few other tools are open source, there's
no way we can stop this. But actually, that's the case for any projects out
there, not only in this field, so many open source projects can be abused. Lets
look at curl, I think the developer of curl is not allowed to enter the United
States, because they think he is a hacker. The only thing we can really do is educate
people about this topic in general and also improve education on VAAs themselves.
So don't take them too serious and maybe take which ones are not honest.
Herald: Yeah, this is actually a question that bothers or bugs the users a lot
because another question is like: How could we ensure that there is no bias in
the questions which actually connects to the previous questions as well. But they
were wondering, for example, if the questions, the topic are not evenly
distributed, which, yeah, actually tends to lead to some kind of bias in the
questions. But like, this is the same problem, like with open source material,
obviously, isn't it? Till: Yeah, yeah. That's a problem. So in
Münster this year, there was another election compass based on the
OpenElectionCompass, and it was from the BUND-Jugend.
So they focused on environmental issues and it was a completely separate project
and it wasn't even the first time they were doing this. In the past they did it
with like flyers and stuff. And I guess that election compass probably was biased
because it was part of their campaign, you could say. I mean, they're not a party but
still. And I think what's most important is that it's transparent. Who is doing
this election compass. So in Lüdenscheid it was a general youth organization not
affiliated with any parties, funded by the government. And I think that's a different
stand really to do that. On the other hand, the project in Münster wasn't that.
It was biased, yes. But that doesn't make it a bad project. Just people have to be
aware of that. And I hope we can tackle all these problems in the future with
something that's more like a platform as a service. Maybe we can build an institution
around this that can govern all these projects and moderate them a little bit.
But maybe that's just a daydream. I don't know. (chuckles)
Herald: OK, but another question that popped up that I find quite interesting as
well is: Why VAAs can successfully approximate a given user's political stand
in comparison to the party's answers to the thesis. I thought... like the user
thought a lot about another issue. The missing knowledge on a theses' actually
context, like they were wondering if you have an idea how to solve that with a
similar technology driven tool or something like that, actually.
Till: Yeah, that's a question I've had for a while. When I first did the Wahl-o-mat,
that question popped up for me as well. Because there were some questions I didn't
know anything about. And the idea is that you just skip those questions and they
completely, they are not counted. That's how they deal with it. But I always
thought, why don't they tell me more about it, so I can make an informed choice? So
far, I haven't managed to find the definite answer to this, but now I believe
they don't do it on purpose. So they do it on purpose, but they don't do it, you
know? I think the risk would be too high to influence users, because when the
Election Compass itself tells you everything you need to know about this
topic, they decide what's true, what information they give you about this
topic. And I think it's incredibly difficult to be really objective when
creating such content. So I guess that's the reason why they don't do it.
And I think it's a good reason, actually. So people should get information somewhere
else, multiple sources. Herald: So you would not lobby for some
kind of option that you could, you know, expand like you are a open source project,
for example, to cover that one as well? Till: No, I don't think so. Actually, if
you scroll down all the way, you can see the party's answers. And I did it on
purpose that you can... it's more like a chat. So they can actually discuss that in
a way and you can read their answers and then decide what, who you believe.
Herald: Yeah. All right. And you are actually doing this by yourself, you
founded this a year ago, some bit prior because you saw the problems that were
there. But how could one join the party? Like how could one help out? How could
somebody work with you on this project? Till: Yeah, well so I have lots of ideas
how you could improve this project. And so far I'm managing fine to do it on my own
in my free time. And I don't intend to do it full time. It's a good side project,
but someday I think more people should get involved. And there are several ways to do
so. So the project is based on Vue.js and everyone who is familiar with that can
easily join. There are small and big todos that could be done, and many ideas will
require a server side application. So that's something I've been working on in
the past few weeks. So that's also something that could attract
contributions. Herald: OK, and another question I have
left would be: Will the slides be available somewhere like do you have your
presentation somewhere online? So people who are interested, who love the design
and content, like the user who posed this question could still grab it somehow?
Till: Thanks, first. Yeah surely, the project already has a website and many
things in the presentation are also on the website. But everything, I will add them
in the next days, I think. And as far for the slides, I can, I will upload them
somewhere unless I don't know you do that. Um, I don't know. You have like this hack
media site where you, where you post some videos. Herald: So we are allowed to put
them online for you. Till: Yeah sure. They will definitely be
available somewhere. Herald: OK. Amazing. Is there something
left for you to say to that. You just want to get off your heart?
Till: Well, I really enjoyed doing this and I myself learned a lot about VAAs in
the process, that was nice. And I'm just happy that so many people listened to me.
Herald: Thank you very much for being here. For your presentation, for your
work, of course. And for being here, for joining us. We will go ahead on this
channel with air filters. It starts at 8 p.m., of course, and it will be some sort
of an instruction how to build your own air filters that actually get your air
clean and virus free by using your 3D printer. For now, we say thank you very
much and say: See you next time.
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