Improving candidate-based voting advice application design

Isotalo, Veikko

doi:10.23978/inf.107215

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Such problems may be caused by ill intentions or innocent but misguided design decisions (such as excluding parties without seats in the parliament (cf Skop, 2010). This underscores the importance of transparency from VAA providers (Ladner et al, 2010), as well as the ongoing best-practice discussions regarding the wording of issue statements (Louwerse and Rosema, 2014;Holleman et al, 2016;Isotalo, 2021) and different forms of aggregating preferences (Germann et al, 2015;van der Linden and Dufresne, 2017;Padilla et al, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Candidates, voters, and voting advice applications

Tromborg

Albertsen

2023

Eur. Pol. Sci. Rev.

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Voters often face a complex information environment with many options when they vote in elections. Research on democratic representation has traditionally been skeptical about voters’ ability to navigate this complexity. However, voting advice applications (VAAs) offer voters a shortcut to compare their own preferences across numerous issues with those of a large number of political candidates. As VAAs become more prevalent, it is critical to understand whether and how voters use them when they vote. We analyze how VAA users process and use VAA information about their district candidates with original survey data from the 2019 Danish parliamentary election in collaboration with the administrators of one of the most widely used Danish VAAs. The results demonstrate that VAAs have substantively large effects on their users’ choices between parties and between candidates within parties.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Candidates, voters, and voting advice applications

Tromborg

Albertsen

2023

Eur. Pol. Sci. Rev.

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“…The individual VAA responses are publicly available. VAAs are discussed in greater detail elsewhere [19].…”

Section: Databasementioning

confidence: 99%

Election promises on children’s wellbeing and health 2015 to 2021 – a study of Finnish voting advice applications database

Hiilamo¹,

Ristikari²,

Helve

et al. 2022

Scand J Public Health

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Background: According to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, children’s views should be heard in policymaking. But it remains unclear to what extent children’s wellbeing is considered in election promises Methods: We investigated the extent to which Finnish political candidates consider children and their wellbeing in their election promises. We used YLE, the national broadcaster’s voting advice application database, and analysed some 35,000 politicians’ election promises made in the 2015 and 2019 parliamentary and the 2017 and 2021 municipal elections. We calculated the proportion of candidates who mentioned children and examined the content of the election promises in which children were mentioned. Logistic regression models were used to examine the role of the background of the characteristics of candidates. Results: In the 2015 and 2019 elections, some 12% and 19% of candidates, respectively, mentioned children in their election promises. The figures for the 2017 and 2021 municipal elections were higher at 19% and 24%, respectively. In the 2021 election, the candidates considering children in their election promises were younger and had higher education qualifications. Inspection of a random set of 350 promises indicated that common issues mentioned in respect of children were education and hobby activities. Concrete proposals to improve the wellbeing of children were rarely put forward. Conclusions: Political candidates are increasingly considering children in their election promises but concrete proposals to improve the wellbeing and health of children are rare. Effective policy solutions to improve the health of children should be discussed in election debates.

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Trustworthiness of voting advice applications in Europe

Stockinger,

Maas,

Talvitie

et al. 2024

Ethics Inf Technol

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Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) are interactive tools used to assist in one’s choice of a party or candidate to vote for in an upcoming election. They have the potential to increase citizens’ trust and participation in democratic structures. However, there is no established ground truth for one’s electoral choice, and VAA recommendations depend strongly on architectural and design choices. We assessed several representative European VAAs according to the Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI provided by the European Commission using publicly available information. We found scores to be comparable across VAAs and low in most requirements, with differences reflecting the kind of developing institution. Across VAAs, we identify the need for improvement in (i) transparency regarding the subjectivity of recommendations, (ii) diversity of stakeholder participation, (iii) user-centric documentation of algorithm, and (iv) disclosure of the underlying values and assumptions.

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Improving candidate-based voting advice application design

Cited by 3 publications

References 23 publications

Candidates, voters, and voting advice applications

Candidates, voters, and voting advice applications

Election promises on children’s wellbeing and health 2015 to 2021 – a study of Finnish voting advice applications database

Trustworthiness of voting advice applications in Europe

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