Crowd voting
Crowdvoting refers to a process in which a large number of nationwide distributed people (the crowd ) vote on a question ( voting ). With crowd voting, the vote is transmitted electronically.
An example of crowd voting is the “Like” button on Facebook . By clicking the Like button, the Facebook user can express whether he likes a post or not. Crowd voting is now very common. Websites like YouTube or Reddit sort the order of their posts according to the voting results of the users of the websites.
The spectrum of questions and possible answers ranges from the simple "Do I like ...?" Yes / No to extensive evaluation sheets in which grades can be assigned in different categories. This type of survey can be found in test portals where you can find out about the quality and properties of products or services. A well-known example is the rating of hotels in travel portals by former guests.
classification
Crowdvoting is often seen as an element or subset of crowdsourcing in web articles . Both terms aim to make " the wisdom of the many " usable for a specific purpose. Crowdsourcing did not emerge until long after the Internet was introduced. For crowd voting, on the other hand, examples can be found from the early days of the Internet.
The crowd voting can be carried out with very simple means. Simple questions can be answered with a single click of the mouse. Compared to other crowdsourcing strategies, crowd voting has the lowest production costs.
In crowd investing , too , crowd voting is now spreading. Currently (as of June 2014), Welcome Investment is the only crowd investing platform to offer a voting process in which users can have a say in which companies are allowed to search for capital via the platform. According to the company, users should also be actively involved. The two platforms meet & seed and United Equity also had crowd-voting approaches, but neither of them have been active since 2012 and did not get beyond a planning phase.
prehistory
The earliest form of crowd voting in the German-speaking world was probably the light test in the television show "Wünsch Dir was" in 1969. The audience voted by switching electrical devices on and off. The vote in the power station was measured on the basis of fluctuations in electricity consumption. This procedure was imprecise. Since 1979, decisions can be made with just a few votes difference with the Tele-Dialog (also known as TED). From 1981 the television show Wetten dass ..? the procedure for nationwide recognition.
commercial use
Advertising, marketing and market research all started to use crowd voting at an early age. Corresponding evaluation buttons or satisfaction queries can be found everywhere on the Internet as an accompaniment to commercial offers. As part of market research , customer surveys are carried out using crowd voting. The market researchers reach a very broad audience in a very short time via crowd voting. The quality of the information obtained about the buyer group is generally inferior to the customer survey techniques that have been introduced.
Political expression
The use of crowd voting on the Internet in politics and public administration is progressing more slowly than in business administration . One of the pioneers here is the state of California . The Los Angeles County Registrar (comparable to a regional election officer in Germany) Dean Logan was forced to break new ground in 2009 due to empty state coffers and outdated voting machines. In a major campaign, he asked LA County citizens and election officials how they envisioned the election process in the future. Design criteria for the future solution were derived from the results, and a design competition was advertised on the Croudsourcing platform Open IDEO . From the original 453 proposals, 11 designs were ultimately selected (in March 2012) by the client. The proposal that achieved the best crowd voting result ( applause ) in the penultimate round ( using ATMs as voting terminals ) was not taken into account. The phase plan, which was available on March 27, 2014, provides for the implementation of the LA County Voting System by the end of 2015 and, according to this planning status, will result in a solution with touchscreen terminals.
Existing private platforms
Platforms such as Avaaz or Campact now offer the possibility of expressing political opinions by means of crowd voting. This form of political citizen participation is still limited to campaigns whose content is more or less specified by individuals or interest groups. In the case of the aforementioned platforms, the supported campaigns are selected using a less than transparent selection process by a subset of active supporters of the platform. Once a campaign has started, the text remains unchanged. You can sign it - or you can't. The crowd does not have a democratic influence on the statements in the call for the campaign . The Avaaz and Campact procedures thus resemble a call for a demonstration that takes place electronically on the Internet.
Public platforms - direct democracy
- Relationship and delimitation of the terms crowd voting and direct or immediate democracy
According to Peter Neumann, the concept of direct democracy can be applied to both the elections of representatives of the people and to factual decisions. For this he coined the term "direct democracy". If z. For example, if a sneaker manufacturer lets its customers vote on the design of a new sneaker model by means of crowd voting, it is a matter of factual decision. The crowd voting is thus the electoral process that, under certain conditions and assumptions, leads to an immediate democratic decision on the model of the sneaker. One assumption is that the manufacturer accepts every decision made by the crowd and also implements models that they consider to be unprofitable. Another is that the "one vote per voter principle" is not violated by manipulation, neither from the crowd (e.g. through multiple voting), nor from the sneaker manufacturer or other parties involved. Furthermore, it would have to be assumed that all persons who would have wanted to vote on the sneaker model were also able to do so.
Thus, in principle, crowd voting can be viewed as a process for bringing about directly democratic, factual decisions. Most of the crowd voting procedures implemented on the Internet are non-transparent and not particularly protected against manipulation. Accusations of manipulation are always part of the public discussion, especially with regard to product evaluation portals and travel portals.
- Public platforms
There is currently no public platform in Germany in which citizens can hold a discourse on the pros and cons of certain questions and in which they can call on the government, ministries and parliaments to take specific action. Public bodies can use the increasing number of private platforms for crowd voting and crowdsourcing. The LA County's example has shown how crowdvoting and crowdsourcing can currently be applied to political decision-making processes. However, public authorities rarely make use of it.
A public crowdvoting and crowdsourcing portal would have other financial and organizational means and could be better integrated into the interface between government and citizens than a private one. Furthermore, there remains a hitherto unsolved technical and legislative challenge to create the conditions for B. to implement referendums via such portals - among other things, because such a development contract has not yet been awarded.
Corresponding considerations and preparations for the possibilities and forms of e-participation have existed in the European Union since 2005 .
- See also
literature
- Peter Neumann: Direct democracy. Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2009, ISBN 978-3-8329-4081-2 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Library
- ↑ Leimeister, JM (2012): Crowdsourcing: Crowdfunding, Crowdvoting, Crowdcreation. In: Zeitschrift für Controlling und Management (ZFCM), Edition / Number: 56, Year of publication: 2012 (PDF; 558 kB)
- ↑ Crowdinvesting 2.0 - Now you have a say! ( Memento of the original from June 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ LA's Elections Overhaul Could Provide a New Model, http://www.governing.com/
- ^ LA County crowdsources ideas for new voting system, Southern California Public Radio
- ↑ How might we design an accessible election experience for everyone ?, INDEO Voting Challenge ( Memento of the original from March 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ INDEO Voting Challenge, Winning Concepts ( Memento of the original from March 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ INDEO Voting Challenge, Voting via ATM network ( Memento of the original from March 28, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ VSAP Voting System Assessment Project ( Memento of the original from March 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ German Institute for Material Direct Democracy - DISUD, TU Dresden ( Memento of the original from March 28, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
