The Vote with Me app is awesome. It links your contact list with voter records and makes it easier to text them asking them to vote. It also shows if voted in past elections or not.
@pratik May be it isn’t, but it sounds so wrong. It looks prone to be exploited by political parties. I am sure this data exists, but so open on private web?
@amit this is public voter data. Political parties have much more detailed data. That’s why Bernie ran as a Democrat coz he wanted their data.
@pratik I don’t need an app to do who knows what else with my contact data to get my friends to vote. I’ve already touched base with them and encouraged them to vote. The merchants in my list aren’t going to appreciate me reminding them to vote, especially if it’s the fifth time one of their customers has brought it up. I also don’t care if anyone has voted in the past, it’s about voting this time. I think this app is misguided or up to something else they aren’t talking about.
@pratik Hmm. May be am a bit uncomfortable with voter information being linked to the mobile phones and identity and made it public.
@amit political identity is much more open and even flaunted here than it is in India. Took me a while to wrap my head around it as well.
@simonwoods @pratik It is possible here. You can but what’s called the ‘marked register’ up to one year after the election. It’s basically a photocopy of the pages used at polling stations to cross people off. (Doesn’t include postal votes, though.)
@jamescousins That's the 'open' register, right? I'm pretty sure I always check the option to be kept off that, although now I have yet another good reason to contact my local election officer!
@simonwoods No, totally separate. That’s just the names and addresses that local authorities can sell to third parties. The marked register is separate. Generally political parties have full access to them.
@jamescousins Oh yeah, totally. Plus the police and so on. I'm mostly OK with that, although it is on the list of things about which I was disappointed to learn about well past my childhood. The 'open' register bothers me in that I see no good reason for it to exist at all; it's like dark patterns in UX.
@simonwoods We have, at least, moved on from the days when you couldn’t opt out, when you were legally obliged to give your information to the local council so they could flog it!
@jamescousins Yeah it's much better now. There are also a lot more strong advocates for citizen's rights across the country than might be obvious, they just don't get the same amount of press as celebrities and the like.
@simonwoods Although on the other side of the fence plenty who have been persuaded that they should want to throw those rights away.
@jamescousins Yep, this is true. However, I think people have proven over and over again that with enough decent access to information and clear explanations of said information they will often make better decisions. From now onward, every national election has the potential to include the most internet-literate generations to have ever been able to vote so I feel hopeful.
@simonwoods I found this an interesting talk from James O’Brien www.thersa.org/events/20... essentially arguing that making people answer the ‘why’ (not just the ‘what’) often transforms their thinking.