Voting Advisor Applications in Europe
Representative democracies are, above all, electoral democracies. The election is the main instrument to assert the normative ideal of democracy. However, the vote is necessary, but it is not sufficient in order to realize a true democracy. The ballot is not enough to impose the intentions of the constituents in the process of decisions making, and often it does not express the authentic popular will. Indeed, in the majority of the cases the elections can even not satisfy the minimal requisites of collective choices[5].
Nevertheless the electoral moment continues to have a great importance for citizens, and the analysis of electoral behaviour remains at the core of political science. The electoral choice constitutes the final action of a long process that is developed along a consensus-consent continuum, in which the «consensus of opinion»[6] constitutes the starting point of a process that carries the constituents to give their own «consent» to the governors (see Figure 1).
I would like to focus on these two main steps of the process, and their relation to Voting Advice Applications (VAAs), starting from the formation of the «consensus of opinion» by constituents with respect to determined issues, political formulas and programs of parties and candidates, and moving to the act of voting in order to choose representatives. I think that along this continuum VAAs can play a significant role in orientating the opinion and the choice of citizens.
The act of voting is not simply a stimulus-reaction effect. Many actors interact with the constituents, by means of parties and media. Political parties are still the main actors of the democratic processes, providing the interpretation of the general interests and the three-dimensional issues of politics (political, personal, and policy issues). The act of voting is separate – even if consequence in most of the cases – from the act of opining. We can individuate the different steps of the processes of opinion, analyzing how they are formed, and how they influence the political agenda, looking both at some structural factors (long-run), and contingent situations (short-run).
The way in which a climate of opinion is formed depends on the level of correspondence between expectations of the constituents and the capacity of the candidates to find proper solutions to some urgent problems.
Between «consensus of opinion» and «consent» there is a gap, a difference of priority in the sense that joining a program, a slogan, and the image of a politician, does not imply automatically a vote for a candidate. Giovanni Sartori wrote that the «consensus of the opinion» can be identified with an idem sentire, a general feeling, a state of the public that characterizes Western democracies, and this state is more and more difficult to reach in the current media system[7]. Political scientists and sociologists generally make confusion between these two steps, and tend to identify them, overlapping the two distinct phases of the continuum. The «consensus of the opinion» does not coincide with the decision to go to vote and it is not already «consent». Between «adhesion» and «decision» there is a long way, with several obstacles and interferences that the constituents – with their needs, preferences, interests, and expectations – try to exceed.
There are different social factors that intervene in order to determine the «consensus of opinion» of the constituents. The citizen needs to be able to choose, and also to decide whether voting or not. Along this continuum it does not have much sense to distinguish the type of vote expressed by the electorate. The «consensus of opinion» is the starting point of every kind of vote – being it an «identification», «opinion», or «impression» vote – as it is of abstention[8].
The «identification vote» is expressed by the constituents who place confidence in the success of a political party and in such case their choices derive from the credence of a direct correspondence between the electoral success of a party and the personal satisfaction. The relevant factor here is party identification, which is typical of those voters who make reference to some pre-existing subcultures. In most cases, voters are not informed on the various positions of candidates and parties in order to make a comparison between the programmatic party proposals. The «identification vote» emphasizes the strong anchorage to a pre-existent subculture giving back a profile of the electorate – rather rigid – and disposed to reveal one's own identity and opinions through an «expressive vote»[9].
Many authors have suggested however that nowadays there are more and more voters who are likely to support those parties that seem more similar to their political position or self-placement. The so-called «opinion vote» is given by voters who choose programs and proposals made by different political parties in competition, as a result of a comparative evaluation. This kind of vote is made by those subjects who are better integrated in the political system, who are informed about the various positions of the different parties and have a propensity to change their own choices in relation to the contingent situation and convenience, in each electoral competition. In this respect, VAAs can facilitate this kind of voters in order to choose the party that is in close proximity to their desires and expectations.
The «opinion vote» is different from the «impression vote» that is formed on the basis of a little evidence. It is especially in this case that VAAs can provide a significant help, and in particular to those voters who are not integrated in the political system, but still have a strong propensity to vote and to participate to the electoral process.
We have spoken about constituents who believe «that a party makes similar proposal to their positions…». This is an opinion too, that not necessarily finds evidence. VAAs experiments give evidence of an elector's proximity to a certain party. I am not speaking about the rationality of the vote, but of the fact that the vote is based on a subjective credence, and not on objective beliefs; citizens choose those parties or candidates that are considered more able to resolve the problems of the country. The most important thing, for the voter, is «to have got an idea», a «personal idea», of a candidate, a party and/or a coalition.
Citizens know their expectations and needs, and their attitude regarding politics sufficiently; they concentrate their attention on salient individuals and this «salience stimulus» has a strong impact on the valuable perceptions[10]. The distinctness of the candidates helps citizens to choose. The electorate has, moreover, a propensity for selecting those candidates who are perceived as different from the others (that is, superior to every other citizen), and at the same time similar to the others; but cognitive requirements regard only the perceived superiority, and not the effective, exceptional qualities of the candidates. The elective procedure, therefore, does not guarantee that the political excellence will be selected; in a representative democracy the electoral systems can only select representatives different from the electorate. In order to attract the attention of the electorate and to provoke a strong and positive judgment, the candidates must emerge.
In this way the relationship between the representative and its constituents becomes a personal feature. The consequence is that the personal character of the representation – typical of the classic parliamentarianism – is emphasized[11], and the personality of the candidates in competition appears, therefore, a fundamental element.
If voters' choice is based on the personality of a candidate, and on the basis of his/her attitude, having no possibility for choosing on the basis of a political program, they indirectly confer a power of prerogative to the representatives. This prerogative is the power to decide not on the basis of promises but rather on contingent factors. For this reason, and in order to obtain votes, candidates express only generic political issues. Their success will depend on this unspecific offer in order to satisfy and reach the greater number of preferences of the social groups.
In this context, constituents are forced to go to the polls under a «veil of ignorance», for they are usually left with little knowledge about the competence of the candidates, and low information about the program of the parties. Moreover the game of the expectations is not so flexible regarding the policy issues. In this situation, voters are pushed into a sort of cognitive funnel from which very little information-keys leak in order to address their choices. In this context of scarcity of information, VAAs can easier address elector's choices.
These applications provide a voter with an answer on which party (or individual, in some cases) is going to represent his opinions and interests in the best way, once the elections are over. Elections are not only political «rituals», they are «cognitive processes»; and the political representation is mainly a «social activity of interpretation»[12]. That is to say, an election does not immediately produce political decisions.
For this reason, opinion processes are fundamental in representative democracies and political analysts must pay more attention to them in order to analyze how they are generated, how much they influence the political agenda, as well as the vote behaviour. In my opinion, Voting Advice Applications represent one of the best way to provide academics with a huge amount of innovative data to conduct research on mass publics' political behaviour. Recently, a great academic interest has arisen on VAAs, and also politicians begin to consider these methods as a way to bridging the gap between government and citizens.
An identikit of the typical VAA user shows him/her as, without exceptions, young, highly educated and keenly interested in politics. It would thus seem generational phenomena: VAAs are conceived primarily for an Internet public, and youngsters are the most active on the web. At the same time, modernization[13] and cognitive mobilization[14] theories predict younger cohorts to need ever less partisan cues in order to decide their vote. In turn, voters with no party identification (that is, predominantly younger voters) will be the most likely to look for more «sophisticated» political cues – such as the those provided by VAAs on the basis of issue preference. Therefore VAAs can provide a valuable advice to issue voters, by making easier and cheaper the costs involved in getting informed. The problem is to see what kind of difference VAAs make to the behaviour of voters.
First of all, VAA usage has been found to affect voters' information-seeking behaviour. As Marschall and Schmidt have shown[15], motivating users to gather more information can be relevant, since the «search for more information can serve to increase one's competences in understanding politics by affecting the extent and quality of individuals' political activities». According to our findings[16], a substantial proportion of users declare that playing the test convinced them to collect further information about political matters (60 percent in Germany; 50 percent in Switzerland; a lower – yet significant – proportion in Finland and Italy).
What matters the most, however, it that VAAs have demonstrated their ability to affect the vote itself, in both quantitative (turnout) and qualitative (vote intention) terms. Obviously, precondition of impact is the spread of their usage. In this respect, we found (unsurprisingly) that VAAs are mostly used in those countries (e.g., Belgium, Finland, Switzerland, the Netherlands) characterized by proportional electoral systems, and thus a larger number of political parties represented in Parliament. The electoral system further affect VAA usage through its ballot structure: hypothetically, the more a system is candidate-centred (a clear case in point: Switzerland), the stronger should be the need for guidance in the act of voting. According to our findings, Swiss and Finnish voters are comparatively the most likely to use VAAs (e.g., proportion of users on the nation's eligible voters).
With respect to VAA effects on turnout (quantitative dimension of voting behaviour) we find a correlation between the time elapsed since the appearance of VAAs on the scene (that is, a VAA's popularity) and its ability to bring voters to the ballot. Older VAAs (e.g., Dutch StemWijzer, Finnish Yleisradiossa, German Wahl-O-Mat) are also those more likely to convince its users to turnout – even if they did not intend to do so before playing the test. The effect in these countries approximates 10 percent (that is, one respondent in ten declares to have been convinced by the test, and only by the test, to take part in upcoming elections).
VAAs' have demonstrated their capability to affect also the qualitative dimension of voting behaviour – that is, the vote choice itself. Once again, the magnitude of the effect is proportional to both the popularity of a VAA among the electorate and the number of political parties competing. The strongest effects are found in Switzerland (where people vote for candidates and in big cantons can cast up to 34 preference votes!) and Finland – the two most candidate-centred systems in our maze. Strong effects are found in the Netherlands as well, in virtue of the huge popularity of the specific tool under analysis (StemWijzer) coupled with the extreme proportionality of the Dutch electoral system. Figures are indeed lower with respect to countries characterized by a smaller number of parties and higher political polarization (e.g., Germany and Italy), or an enduring adherence of social cleavages and the vote (Belgium).
In sum, I believe that VAAs have become, and will increasingly be, important in the electoral landscape of Western democracies. They can affect voters' behaviour to a significant extent. Furthermore, they are being used by growing numbers of voters; these are young, highly educated and interested in political matters – that is, the cognitively mobilized, which, according to modernization theory, we expect to keep growing. In addition, the process of partisan dealignment[17] going on in Western societies leads us to hypothesize that VAAs will be important to an increasing number of voters lacking partisan cues.
Beyond Voting Advisor Applications: American Elect
Americans Elect (AE) is an electronic platform, created on September 2011, for the next Presidential nomination in the United States. It grew out of a failed 2008 effort to provide an alternative in the presidential race, and aims to secure a slot on the November ballot in all 50 states for a to-be-determined candidate who would be nominated in the nation's first online convention next summer. The group secured ballot slots in Florida, Alaska, Nevada, Kansas, Arizona and Michigan. It has submitted signatures for certification in California, Utah and Hawaii. AE does not support or oppose any particular candidate or candidate's committee, nor political parties.
In fact, it is the first nonpartisan online presidential voting adviser, but in a peculiar way. Every registered voter can be a delegate; no matter their party; any constitutionally-eligible citizen can be a candidate. With AE voters have the power to choose leadership that puts «country before party», and America's interests before special interests.
The application started on September 2011 and will finish on June 2012 following these main steps:
1. Fall 2011: definition of the issues, and the «true political colors beyond red and blue»; shaping the «platform of question» all candidate must answer, and matching with like-minded candidates.
2. Winter 2011-2012: opening the race; this is a double-step phase; first, Americans Elect delegates, drafting candidate who have to run and declare their own candidacy; second, candidates and draft committees have to submit positions on the issues, and respond to the «platorm of questions», gathering support from Americans Elect delegates across the countries. They can also bring new delegates to the website to build support, and submit qualification to the Candidate Certification Committee.
3. On April-May 2012 qualifying ballots begin. Americans vote in three rounds of balloting on the website of AE. The field is narrowed to the six candidates with the most votes, and they must declare their intention to run.
4. June 2012: the online Convention begins and Americans vote in up to threee rounds of balloting on the webside of AE. Voting continues until a single ticket achieves a majority. Results are verified by an independent panel of election experts, and at the end, winning ticket receives the AE nomination.
5. November 2012: the AE ticket appears on the 2012 ballot in all 50 states.
The first step consists on sending a message explaining the reasons for joining AE; the second one consists on sharing opinions and informations about issues and proposals, participating in the forums and blogs; and the third step consists on «picking a president», directly.
On the AE website[18] there is a manual and a series of documents with some suggestions in order to enlarge the network, and reach other people, starting by the existing network of friends, colleagues and neighbors.
Americans Elect is considered as a second process, not a third party, as the promoters emphasize. It is a brand new way all voters can participate in selecting a Presidential ticket to be placed on the November 2012 ballot in all 50 states.
AE is open to everyone regardless of party affiliation or political views; anyone constitutionally qualified to serve as President may run for the Americans Elect nomination as long as they reach across the political space and pick a running mate from another party.
AE is more than a Voting Advice application; it is a second way to nominate a President; it has no ties to any political group – left, right, or center. AE does not promote any issues, ideology or candidates. At the moment, it is the most powerful and sophisticated tool that affords American citizens to decide on a platform of questions that all candidates will be required to answer in order to seek the nomination.
Every single registered voter in the United States can be a Delegate and vote in the AE Online Convention. He/she has, first, to become a delegate, registering on AE website, and participate in AE's online surveys. Delegates will define the issues most important to them, they can discuss these issues online or at meet-ups with other delegates, and participate in shaping the AE platform questions for all constitutionally qualified candidates to answer. They can also vote in the Online Convention[19].
AE is an electronic application that involves persons, not parties, individuals, one by one; it represents an alternative way to the traditional practice of election ballots[20]. In the United States the process of obtaining ballot access is costly and complicated, and the rules governing it vary from state to state, with different timetable. This application changes how Americans nominate their President and Vice President, building a secure online convention: the first one in the history of the American conventions. But the electronic agorà is not the unique place to talk to the people. AE also needs to organize door-to-door in every neighborhood and on every college campus, by means of the so called hi-tech/hi-touch politics.
Some traditional physical spaces remain, as churches, local bookstores, football matches, subway or bus stops, senior citizen centers, and local farmers' markets. AE acts as a facilitator actor, almost as a movement. But AE is not a grass-roots movement like the Tea Party, or Occupy Wall Street. And it is not democratic, as many critics say, considering AE a top-down movement, with wealthy donors and a board of directors.
Americans Elect has been also defined as a «nonpartisan group», even if it includes both Republicans and Democrats anxious to open up the political process[21]. Until now (December 2011) it has gathered more than two millions of petition signatures, that is already over half what is needed to put the AE ticket on the ballot nationwide, and over 350,000 supporters.
Many opinion leaders and analysts think that Republican and Democratic parties are destroying politics and the whole political system. They remember when campaigns were the interval between governing, and now governing has become the brief interval between campaigns. According to them, political parties are a real danger for democracy. But, is democracy thinkable without parties? Does AE really represent an alternative in the competition? Is it a democratic tool as their promoters say? Is it truly independent from political parties?
Independence from parties is widespread in the United States, as exemplified by the Perot candidacy in 1992 and 1996, and support for incipient third party in the movements[22]. But independence from parties does not assure that the best choice will be made.
The Constitution of the United States does not mention political parties, and how the electorate should be mobilized. But as some political scientists show, institutions – such as election laws and organized efforts to mobilize voters – are more often causal[23].
Most of the institutional facilitators of mobilization came to an end with the Progressive era reforms of 1890s which eroded the ability of the parties to mobilize voters, thus still Americans remain not politically active, nor confident in the legislative branch, in the Congress, and institutions. As a recent Gallup survey shows, confidence in Congress is very low, and institutions like the presidency and the US supreme court have no high levels of confidence.
Applications as AE aim to encourage the mobilization of voters, but not to recover the partisan decline. The partisan order rests altered, and as Dalton and Wattenberg say, an «altered partisan order would affect the representation of citizen interestes, the process by which societal decisions are made, and the process of policy implementation»[24].
How AE will affect the 2012 race, depends on what kind of candidate its delegates select in next June's online convention, which will be open to any registered voter. This is the crucial point.
AE rejects the notion its candidate could turn out to be a spoiler and says that putting the choice in the hands – or clicks – of millions of registered voters will ensure the selection of a qualified nominee[25]. AE does not focus only on candidates. It compares candidates' positions on some specific issues, as economy, education, energy, environment, foreign policy, healthcare, immigration, reform and social issues. Voters pose the critical questions on the web, facing the nation, and then with other delegates decide which questions are most important. The best questions will shape the final platform candidates must answer.
Until now (December 2022) over 25 millions of questions have been answered by US citizens.
Compared with the European voting advisor applications, Americans Elect offers an articulated non-partisan source of political information, starting from voters' choices and preferences, and not from parties' positions on a number of core policy issues.
AE is a double-face voting adivice application: a) it compares users' position on a variety of issues with that of other like-minded voters, who decide which questions are most important, shaping the final platform candidates must answer, and b) works as another way of selecting candidates, not only issues.
Many analysts expect that AE will have remarkable effects on American voters' opinion and electoral behaviour, but it is impossible to predict the impact of this application. It is all «terra incognita», as Will Marshall said. But AE is not a neutral vehicle at all, even if voters can propose anyone they like, rather it seems designed for potential centrist candidates, and for this reason, it might reduce the polarization that has infected the two major traditional parties[26].
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