
UK Election Tech Handbook - benrmatthews
https://electiontechhandbook.uk/projects
======
obayesshelton
My only concern is that the people who run the tools etc. have their political
view. For example "[https://tacticalvote.co.uk"](https://tacticalvote.co.uk")
is clearly against the Conservative party. So that tool is straight away
biased.

~~~
dangerface
> UNITE AGAINST THE TORIES

Every one has a bias at least they own it. As long as they are not pretending
to be unbiased I'm fine with it.

~~~
methehack
If promoting voting or identifying the disinformation campaigns of nation
states is considered bias, than consider me happily labeled. However, I think
there's something categorically different about such tools as they are not so
much promoting a specific outcome as allowing for a more representative
outcome, aka a functioning democracy where people are exchanging ideas not
click rates.

~~~
dangerface
Our representative democracy is setup as a two party system (first past the
post elections) if we want a more representative outcome we should switch to a
direct democracy or implement the alternative vote.

Free exchange of ideas is my ultimate goal but the average voter doesn't share
this goal, they get their information from "authoritative" sources such as
"their" party or the mass media.

We did have a vote to bring in the alternate vote but every major party (left
and right) and media outlet (left and right) slammed it as anti-democratic.

We can't depend on the average voter to get informed and vote representatively
because the system intentionally prevents this.

~~~
specialist
_" alternative vote"_

If you mean switch from FPTP to some form of RCV for executive positions or
proportional representation (PR) for assemblies, then I agree.

For RCV, I strongly prefer Approval Voting, which best balances fairness and
simplicity.

But we'll get the most benefits from PR.

~~~
Pete_D
"alternative vote" is the term the UK ended up using for instant-runoff voting
when it had a referendum a few years back.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_Alternative_Vot...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_Alternative_Vote_referendum,_2011)

~~~
Wildgoose
Not quite. I think the proposals only affected the top two ranked candidates
in the first round, i.e. arguably no better than First Past the Post.

Approval Voting would be simple, easy to understand and a vast improvemnet.

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pjc50
Whotargetsme is a good start, but I think this election is one where fighting
algorithmically targeted disinformation is going to be absolutely critical.

------
nathan_young
A lot of these tools have very little money or support. Some of them have had
1m+ views last election.

If something interests you, you could offer to help the developers involved.

(disclosure: I am involved in the project)

------
sefrost
Has anyone in the UK volunteered their skills for any projects like those
listed before? Would love to hear about your experience.

~~~
buro9
I'm working on [https://tacticalvote.co.uk](https://tacticalvote.co.uk) and
volunteered during the 2017 snap General Election too.

# Tech

Our site handled a lot of traffic at the last snap election. 2.6m unique
visitors in the 5 weeks before the vote, a crazy number during the last 48
hours.

To accommodate this we have a static site builder, with our data in Google
Sheets. We monitor github for changes, Sheets for changes, and auto-generate
the site. The site builder translates the Google Sheet into JSON.

This then pushes a Cache Purge instruction to Cloudflare. Cloudflare is
configured to cache everything at the edge for hours, but in the browser for
minutes... meaning we serve virtually nothing from the origin server, and over
99% of reqs from Cloudflare caches.

Doing this meant we had to design everything to just be static HTML and JS. It
works well.

We communicate in Slack, use MailChimp for email mailouts, and have a GSuite
account with some alias emails.

# What is the org like?

No-one is working on this full-time, but we have a team of ~5 people who all
do just a little. It's no burden for this to exist, and the costs are
virtually $0 outside of the election period.

The only cost we have is MailChimp during the election period, so we will be
crowdfunding to allow us to keep people informed about changes, etc.

We are very much a small group of individuals from wildly different
backgrounds and political beliefs who happen to have a common goal but for
different reasons. We aren't trying to convince each other about "why" to do
this work, only that the goal makes it worth it even though different
individuals have different goals.

# Why am I involved?

It is not as if I necessarily believe that the Tories are vile, Labour is
better, etc. (Though some in the team do express this.)

What I personally believe is that we should have proportional representation,
and that mass tactical voting is an important step towards progressive
candidates and progressive parties before we can reach a full PR system. Mass
tactical voting applies pressure and encourages progressive behaviour.

My contribution then, is towards fairer election systems.

~~~
obayesshelton
As soon as I saw "UNITE AGAINST THE TORIES" I left the page, regardless of who
I vote for this tool is clearly biased.

~~~
n4r9
Counterpoint: the Tories are the largest benefactors of an unfair fptp-based
gerrymandered voting system. In 2017 they received 5% more votes than Labour
but 20% more MPs. They're the most obvious target for someone interested in
tactical voting, regardless of their political persuasion (they're very
unlikely to be a Tory voter).

~~~
marksweston
This is simply not true.

FFTP is biased in favour of the party with the largest share of the vote, or
perhaps another way of putting is that the relationship between vote share and
number of MPs is not linear.

And beyond this, the British electoral system has consistently favoured Labour
for decades (as Boundary Commission changes fall behind demographic change and
population movement)

[https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/boundaries-review-
bias-...](https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/boundaries-review-bias-
constituencies-voting-system-labour-theresa-may-dup-a8538971.html)

~~~
n4r9
Thanks for the link. I've read the Independent article, clicked through and
read the author's Facebook "footnote", and also read the paper referenced in
that.

I can't see anything that disputes the claim "The Tories are the clearest
benefactors" of the UK's electoral system.

The author makes a repeated assertion that boundaries are currently biased "15
seats" against the Tories, but I cannot tell where this number is coming from.

The fact remains that the Tories have won the last few elections by receiving
a disproportionate number of MPs relative to their vote share. Moreover,
polling suggests that they will continue to have the highest vote share.

~~~
marksweston
it is utterly bizarre that you're treating the fact that the party that got
the most votes won the most seats as evidence that the electoral system is
biased towards them.

Have you considered adding elections when the Conservatives didn't win the
most votes to your data set?

~~~
n4r9
That's a disappointing misrepresentation of my premise, which is that the
system is biased so that high vote shares confer _disproportionately_ many
seats.

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jlokier

      Some tools might be unavailable due to heavy traffic in this file. [Try again] [Dismiss]
    

I love the way I'm seeing load warnings from Google on this document, as
though it's overwhelmed by being listed on Hacker News :-)

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mellosouls
This looks like an interesting initiative and I wish you the best with it,
however I think you should reconsider placing a WhatsApp group link on a
publicly crawlable webpage.

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rapnie
This is a good addition for the Filterbubble breakers section..

[https://www.talkingeurope.eu/](https://www.talkingeurope.eu/)

 _" Talking Europe connects citizens having an opposing political view - and
living in a different country!_

 _Our mission is to create a European public sphere. We want to foster
democracy and cohesion in Europe. "_

~~~
nathan_young
Please add it in.

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methehack
Does anyone know of a similar resource for the next US presidential election?

~~~
bszupnick
I'm only hooked in to the Democratic technology side, but there is
[https://thedemlabs.org/](https://thedemlabs.org/) that collates (and creates)
a bunch of technological solutions for campaigns problems.

I'm also personally affiliated with [https://ragtag.org/](https://ragtag.org/)
which is a bunch of volunteers trying to make said resources and tools.

------
drcongo
> Join the WhatsApp group to be kept up to date with major updates & news:
> WhatsApp Group

Yeah, sure, hand over all your political planning to Facebook.

~~~
edsaperia
Do your planning wherever you like, but join the whatsapp group to share
general updates.

~~~
robjan
The main problem is that the WhatsApp group is nearly at its limit and you can
see everyone's phone number. This is one of the ways Telegram excels.

