Comments on: Increasing interest in Web-based politics

By: The Luntz effect at Irish Election

The Luntz effect at Irish Election — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 23:41:27 +0000

[...] The artificial nature of focus groups is a major limiting factor as what people say in these groups simply don’t reflect the trends in the real world. Negative advertisements in US politics are a noted example where participants often express genuine antipathy and question or even reject the information they present as being false. The previous US Presidential campaign shows how this type of advertising worked in communicating negative information effectively and as I’ve noted previously here, it was also put to more recent use in the US Senate and House campaigns. Taking a note again from Mark Blumenthal who discusses the use of focus groups as reality TV and states “Unlike the traditional focus group, the networks put people on a soundstage in a brightly lit studio, where the participants surely know they are on live television. I am not aware of any formal research on TV focus groups, but it seems that if peer pressure from ten strangers leads a participant to hide or alter an opinion, what is the effect speaking freely to several million ?” [...]

By: joemomma

joemomma — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 23:19:35 +0000

Online voting is not just tricky to get right, it is in fact nothing less than impossible in a system which requires a secret ballot. As soon as you allow voting from remote sites you cannot confirm that the secrecy of the ballot has not been compromised.

By: Braz

Braz — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 16:04:19 +0000

Voting online would be really nice if Eircom ever manages to bridge the digital divide by actually completing the local loop unbundling. There are a few interesting approaches including work on `Voting in Online Deliberative Assemblies' or taking a more secure approach to paper ballots which could be also applied online (see 'Voting Technologies and Trust') which could potentially offer solutions in the future but other systems such as SERVE and analysis of it by experts (see also analysis of Assemblee des Francais de letranger analysis) show that online voting is quite a tricky piece of software to get right. I think I went on enough about eVoting machines already. They might make good doorstops....

By: Jack M

Jack M — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 15:43:14 +0000

So the Celtic Cubs will vote Fianna Fail/PDs then? Seems most likely that the seifening of the mighty Euro in the Cubs ‘coffers’ will happen during this watch

I jest ….

Now wouldn’t it make sense to be able to vote on-line? Unique polling card refernce number, PPS/RSI number and off you go ….saving employer’s/employee’s valuable time and money.

PS: Lets not go on about the eVoting machines again, my skin begins to ache when I think about it.