Weblog on the Internet and public policy, journalism, virtual community, and more from David Brake, a Canadian academic, consultant and journalist
2 November 2004

I was going to recommend last minute voters take a look at Presidential Guidester which I read about in Wired News but then I checked it out. It asks how important a variety of issues are to me but not what stance I take on them which to my mind makes it at least a useless and at worst a dangerous way to ‘help’ people make decisions. For example taxes are a very important issue to me – I would like to see them higher. Job creation is important to me, but I see free trade as the best way to ensure this happens. Gas prices are very important to me – I would like to see them raised dramatically (over time). The Presidential Guidester doesn’t offer me any way to even express those views so that I can see which candidate matches them. If I say taxes are important to me I assume that answer pushes me more towards the Republican point of view.

No Comments

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.