Technology offers a whole new way to manage IWV

Given we are a small island, most people probably know (directly or otherwise) a handful of candidates whom they may vote for, but they most definitely will not know enough to fill a ballot paper. It’s also a given that few will be trawling through the dozens and dozens of manifestos (and from experience we know these are of limited use anyway, they rarely reflect how a deputy eventually goes on to vote).

Since the ultimate goal of island-wide voting is to allow you, the voter, to elect a bunch of deputies that share your point of view and (hopefully) vote the way you would, how are we truly going to resolve this problem now that the people have their wish?

Fortunately, I believe a solution does exist, one which would make identifying your ideal candidates a relatively simple affair and guarantees you choose ones that actually reflect your viewpoint. It would also allow all candidates (standing deputies and newbies alike) to have equal weight in a voter’s eyes, saves money (long term) and to some extent could help form more consensus in the process. All this will be possible, but only if the States are brave enough to embrace modern technology.

So what is the panacea of future electioneering? A single, centralised ‘election’ website containing all the information a voter needs to help select their choices. It works like this:

n The website holds a long list of questions under various categories, all of which can be answered as ‘for’, ‘against’ or ‘undecided’, which all potential candidates answer (optionally with their reason for this view). For example: ‘Did you vote for island-wide voting?’ ‘Should Guernsey become independent?’ ‘Would you legalise cannabis?’ etc.

n Voters go to the site and choose from some/all of the various questions they feel most strongly about and state their own ‘for’ or ‘against’ view to each question.

n Any candidate that matches the voter’s response gets a positive ranking. Those that have an opposite opinion get a negative ranking. ‘Undecided’ and unanswered questions also score a slight negative ranking to encourage candidates to a) respond and b) take a stance on the questions.

n The voter continues to answer as many questions as they like; with each question the candidate rankings are adjusted to build up a ‘best fit’ to the voter’s views and displayed in descending order (i.e. Candidate ‘X’ 95% matches your views, Candidate ‘Y’ is 90%, Candidate ‘Z’ 82% etc.)

n By continuing this process the voter ends up with a list showing the ‘most suitable’ candidates for them displayed at the top, with those least like you at the bottom. The facility to hard copy this (or at least the top 38 recommendations) can also be provided as an ‘aide-memoire’ for when it’s time to go to the election booth.

For those who want to study the candidates in more detail the website would also host a ‘profile’ page for each one. Along with basic details (name, picture, parish, experience, associations etc.) a manifesto space is provided for them to fill in as they wish.

With regard to the questions, these would cover a range of categories; topical items, outstanding issues from the last term, future vision of the island, political viewpoint etc. It should also include a ‘voters’ questions’ section. Prior to each election the general populous would be encouraged to submit questions, with the most popular being added to the website.

Importantly, there would also be a dedicated category for voting results from the last term by incumbent deputies, allowing voters to actually see how they voted. This would not disadvantage new candidates however since they can also answer these questions (how they would have voted, had they been elected).

Obviously the onus is now on candidates to ensure they spent enough time filling in all the details, otherwise they will not be able to significantly rise up a voter’s list, but this is deliberate; any candidate not prepared to answer the questions is probably not fit to be a deputy. The advantage for them, however, is that they will not need to directly canvass since the website levels the playing field for all candidates.

Hopefully the advantages of such a system are obvious, but here are just a few which immediately spring to mind:

n Visibility: all candidate’s information available in the same format and visible at a glance.

n Equality: all candidates are treated and viewed the same.

n Time saving: no need to review every manifesto, candidates who are a natural match to the voter automatically emerge. If a voter then wishes they can review just those few.

n Cost and environmental savings: candidates will not need to waste paper, time and States money circulating manifestos and flyers.

n Consensus: should party politics start to emerge the impact on electing individual candidates will be greatly reduced, each candidate’s merits will stand alone to the voter.

There are obviously many more but I’ll leave it to the reader to make their own conclusion. This is easily possible: the technology to produce such a website is readily available and the initial website can be cheaply and easily produced by any competent web development team. It would also be easy enough to turn it into an app for tablets, phones etc.

Once up, running and proven it could then be further enhanced for future elections, even ultimately acting as a portal for online voting if the appetite existed.

All that it requires is a States actively willing to enable and make island-wide voting a success now that it has finally been allowed to see the light of day. (I’m happy to discuss this idea in more detail should anyone wish).

jonfromguernsey@yahoo.co.uk

Name and address withheld.