In the national elections held last week in Holland, the right-of-center Christian Democratic Appeal party won the most seats in the parliament, but while these results were seen as proof of a "public schizophrenia" regarding the treatment and acceptance of immigrants, there was another underlying element to the election that reflected the evolving role of technology in national polls.

A non-partisan Dutch group called the Instituut voor Publik en Politiek, or the Dutch Centre for Political Participation, created a web-based voter guide called the StemWijzer that polls voters' political preferences. Voters take a ten-minute test called VoteMatch that asks yes/no questions ranging from "Citizens should elect a prime minister" to "A homeowner receives tax relief on mortgage interest. This scheme should be made less advantageous for people in the higher income groups who take out a new mortgage" to "No new mosques may be built." After users have answered all of the questions, StemWijzer recommends which parties to vote for based on the user's answers.

According to a post on Slashdot, in this recent election "almost 10 million votes were cast, and statistics show that a full half of those who voted used a popular web-based voter guide" (I have not been able to find anything to verify these statistics). Nevertheless, if even a million people used the guide, that would mean one-tenth of voters accessed the same non-partisan site to help navigate the 35 active Dutch political parties.

What does this mean for politics in the U.S.? Given our two-party system, people are skeptical about the credibility of any group that claims to be non-partisan; perhaps only Project Vote Smart has been successful at this. Also, the StemWijzer is uniquely suited to the Dutch political environment, in which there is a party for everyone from animal-rights activists (Party for the Animals) to proponents of pedophilia (Party for Neighborly Love, Freedom, and Diversity). But in a two-party system, all of the variations in political opinion enabled by a 30-question voter guide must be narrowly channeled toward one party or the other.

Nevertheless, the fact that possibly one-half of Dutch voters used a web-based voter guide is exciting; that can only mean more online participation in the future.

Tags: dutch elections, StemWijzer, VoteMatch, voter guides

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