sam wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 11:04:00 +0100, Alan Bell
> <alan.bell@???> wrote:
>
>> I am going on a little adventure to Broadcasting house in London on
>> Friday to be interviewed for the Click ON programme in relation to the
>> general election and in particular the http://votegeek.org.uk website.
>>
>
> Just a general comment - is this re-inventing what www.theyworkforyou.com
> is doing? I realise that there's a focus on technology, but there's a
> lot of good info on the latter site about the incumbants which votegeek
> seems to be trying to re-gather.
>
no. theyworkforyou.com is about MPs and what they vote for. There are no
MPs at the moment, there are just candidates. Votegeek.org.uk is purely
about the election and this period where people are choosing candidates
to represent them in parliament. The website writetothem.com is now
suspended for writing to members of parliament, because there are none.
> I realise it's not a total overlap, but any overlap is inefficient.
>
it is distinct from that one - although I have seen some aspirational
statements about theyworkforyou.com asking candidates questions about
their views on a range of issues.
There are similar websites, yournextmp.com is a data hub, collating
contact details of the candidates, votegeek.org.uk pulls data from this
website using their API. You can have a look here
http://www.yournextmp.com/supporters at the list of people and websites
using their API (votegeek.org.uk was I think the first or second on the
list, and using the API before there was a list)
If you look on your constituency page (
http://votegeek.org.uk/aldershot/
in your instance if Gerald Howarth was your MP) there are links to a
leaflet gathering project
http://www.thestraightchoice.org/leaflets.php?n=aldershot and
Democracy Club.
http://www.democracyclub.org.uk/constituencies/aldershot/ the Democracy
Club project is a bit of a collection of efforts related to
http://www.mysociety.org/
> As a more specific comment, I did email Gerald Howarth recently about
> libel reform (as part of the Simon Singh campaign), and got back a long,
> detailed but overall negative answer.
>
>
Votegeek.org.uk is about sharing the opinions of all the prospective
candidates, not just the outgoing MP. In fact the previous MP is the
least interesting of the candidates because we have their voting record
on theyworkforyou.com to look at.
Why not take the question you emailed to Gerald Howarth and email it to
your Labour, UKIP, LibDem and Official Monster Raving Loony Party
candidates to see if they have got any better ideas.
Alan.
