Wahlkabine.at

Wahlkabine.at is an online voting advice application before elections that can be used to find out how personal opinions coincide with the positions of the candidate parties. Interested users answer a list of approx. 25 questions on current topics with a click of the mouse and finally receive a detailed overview of the parties with which there is the greatest or least agreement with regard to the questions answered.

Wahlkabine.at is available as a service in the time before elections to the Landtag, Nationalrat and European Parliament in Austria. Since its start in 2002, it has recorded 70 million individual questions and gave information to a total of 850,000 users before the National Council election in autumn 2008. Before the 2013 National Council election, there were one million users. Wahlkabine.at is a project of the Institute for New Cultural Technologies / t0 in cooperation with the Austrian Society for Political Science , the Society for Political Enlightenment and the Institute for Political Science at the University of Innsbruck.

history

The Austrian online tool Wahlkabine.at was first used in the 2002 National Council elections . Wahlkabine.at was developed by the Institute for New Cultural Technologies / t0 with political science participation. The project was presented in two languages ​​as wahlkabine.it / cabina-elettorale.it at the state elections in South Tyrol in 2008 for the first time in Italian.

Wahlkabine.at was also used in the elections for the Austrian student body in 2011 and 2013.

The Internet voting booth was presented in June 2008 at the NECE conference in the EU Parliament in Strasbourg as a European example of best practice in political education. In the run-up to the 2009 European elections, the international network developed a joint Internet platform to mobilize voters. In addition, an English-language version of Wahlkabine.at was presented for the first time.

In 2008 the project at the democracy initiative "You are decisive!" the Austrian Federal Government involved. Since 16- and 17-year-olds were also allowed to vote for the first time in the National Council elections in 2008, this initiative sought to "make democracy tangible for young people and to awaken the desire for democracy and politics."

Wahlkabine.at has meanwhile become a popular means in schools too to encourage young people to discuss relevant political issues and to point out the differences between the parties and is recommended in the "Teaching materials on the youth parliament" published by the parliament. Teaching materials for use in schools, interviews with political figures, texts on political education and a glossary explaining key political terms serve as a further resource for interested users.

functionality

• An editorial team made up of people with proven expertise in political science, political journalism and methodology creates a catalog of questions on current political issues.
• The parties represented in the Austrian National Council, in the state parliaments or in the EU Parliament (federal or state management) answer the questionnaires.
• The answers are evaluated by the editorial team. Particular care is taken to ensure that the positions sent are consistent with a certain continuity that has characterized the political line in the past few months.
• Wahlkabine.at goes online six weeks before the election.
• Users answer around 25 questions on current political issues. In an automated process, their answers are compared with the positions of the parties and their respective weightings. From a methodological point of view, both the point of view (yes / no / no answer) and the weighting (importance of the topic in the voting decision) are decisive for determining the results. This means that the degree of agreement with a party line can be shown as well as the distance to the other.

literature

• Karin Liebhart and Martin Wassermair: "wahlkabine.at - an online voting aid arouses new interest in politics" ; in: Rosenberger, Sieglinde Katharina , and Gilg Seeber. "Head to Head: Opinion Research in the Media Election Campaign." Vienna: Czernin Verlag 2003
• Mayer, Christine and Monika Mokre: "Why Austria's most successful vote match tool is now more important than ever"; in: Elections in Europe Volume 5: Participation in Electoral Processes. ACEEEO (Association of European Election Officials), Budapest 2009.
• Mayer, Christine and Martin Wassermair: “Promoting an Enlightened Understanding of Politics” ; in: Cedroni, Lorella and Diego Garzia [eds.]: Voting Advice Applications in Europe: The State of the Art. Napoli: Scriptaweb, 2010.

See also

• Voting advice application

Web links

• Wahlkabine.at

Individual evidence

1. ↑ diePresse.com: Where should you make your "Kreuzerl"? August 14, 2008: http://diepresse.com/home/politik/neuwahlen/406267/index.do?from=simarchiv
2. ↑ As of July 2013
3. ↑ derstandard.at: platform Wahlkabine before financial exit: http://derstandard.at/1395057214058/Plattform-Wahlkabine-vor-finanziellem-Aus
4. ↑ Dolomites: Parliament: Young people vote! October 6, 2008: http://wahlkabine.at/presse/dolomiten_061008/filedownload
5. ↑ derStandard.at: Wahlkabine.at should make it easier to make decisions in the case of ÖH elections April 18, 2013: http://derstandard.at/1363708395783
6. ↑ Vote Match Europe 2009: http://www.votematch.eu - In addition to Wahlkabine.at/ cabina-elettorale.it, projects from Bulgaria (Glasovoditel), Germany (Wahl-O-Mat), Ireland (Vote Match IE) also took part , the Netherlands (StemWijzer), Poland (Latarnik Wyborczy), Romania (Testeaza-ti votul!) the Czech Republic and Slovakia (Kohovolit), Hungary (Választási Iránytű) and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (Vote Match UK) .
7. ↑ orf.at: Net tool for the undecided, May 10, 2009: http://wahlkabine.at/presse/orfon100509/filedownload
8. ↑ http://en.wahlkabine.at
9. ↑ Mein Parlament.at: http://www.meinparlament.at/koop/meinparlament.at/images/presse/08-08-28-entscheidendbistdu.pdf  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
10. ↑ You are decisive !: - ( Memento of the original dated February 3, 2009 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. 
11. ↑ Österreichisches Schulportal - A cooperation between education highway and the Ministry of Education: http://www.schule.at/index.php?url=themen&top_id=1633 and archived copy ( memento of the original from September 16, 2008 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. 
12. ↑ Parliament of the Republic of Austria, Vienna 2007: http://www.reininsparlament.at/fileadmin/user_upload/_GesamtesArbeitsmaterial.pdf  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
13. ↑ Interviews with the youth spokespersons of the parties, 2008: http://wahlkabine.at/ab16/
14. ↑ z. B. Sieglinde Katharina Rosenberger, Gilg Seeber: head to head. Opinion research in the media election campaign. http://wahlkabine.at/ueber/kopfankopf/
15. ↑ http://wahlkabine.at/glossar
16. ↑ Salzburger Nachrichten, If the choice is difficult: voting booth helps, August 25, 2008: http://www.salzburg.com/nwas/index.php?article=DMappe/8fd6y83q*cxgk7o4x2v6gd_&img=&text=DText/otqnpml~bis_vjs$ imo7qbz & mode = & section = & channel = topic & sort = #