One algorithm created by Zeliha Khashman, a researcher in international relations at the Near East University in Nicosia, Cyprus, claims to be able to predict how US Members of Congress will vote on national issues by combining their public opinions with their party affiliation.īut Beth Singler, an AI researcher at the University of Cambridge, warns against investing too heavily in their predictive power.
Can algorithms capture the complex world of politics – which is often defined by compromise and pragmatism?
A candidate may lean toward right-wing economic principles, for instance, but these aren’t likely to be exercised in parliament if their party as a whole leans to the left. Then there is the question of how the balance of politician versus party should be weighted. Finally, counterintuitive results had to be weeded out – for example, environmental legislation that was voted down by green parties, perhaps for not being stringent enough.īut can we trust tools like these to serve us the politician most deserving of our vote? The selection of issues on which candidates are rated carries a great deal of influence, though both Frantescu and Peck are keen to point out that their representation of candidates’ views is evidence-based: either from votes they’ve cast in government, manifesto pledges, or comments made on the record. The issues also had to be popular ones, so users would have firm opinions on them. To begin with, Frantescu’s team had to choose the most contentious issues – it doesn’t help to know where a voter stands on an issue which most parliamentarians agree upon. We are trying to bridge the gap using technology to help citizens make informed choices.” “We built this so people can make informed choices based on logical reasons. “Most choices we make are based on anything else but logical reasons, mostly emotional ones – how a person speaks, or how a person dresses,” says Frantescu. They hope the tool, called, will be adapted for other elections in the future. Visitors to the website voted as if they were politicians themselves, which the algorithm used to match them to like-minded candidates. To do this, Frantescu’s team put together a suite of 25 questions drawn from real-life decisions made by the EU parliament. This year, hundreds of thousands of EU citizens used a tool the think tank produced to match voters with their most suitable candidate in the European Parliament elections. Step in Doru Frantescu, director of Vote Watch Europe. So can artificial intelligence find our perfect match when it comes to political candidates? We even let machines shortlist our romantic prospects. Recommendation engines find us the cheapest flights, the best car insurance, the optimum mobile phone package, serve us advertisements for things we didn’t know we wanted, find us books to read, movies to watch, suggest gift ideas, and curate playlists of our favourite artists. But can technology help?Īfter all, machines make all kinds of difficult decisions for us. With the US Presidential elections looming in 2020 and a bitter general election scheduled in the UK in December, the task facing voters is unlikely to get any easier. Lies, propaganda and fake news: A challenge for our age.Voters in the world’s largest democratic elections in India, for example, had to choose from more than 8,039 candidates nationwide from 650 different parties in polling split into eight phases. Most people don’t have that kind of time. Making an informed choice in the voting booth requires a great deal of investment – reading up on every candidate, weighing their relative merits against one another. ( Read more about how faces can change politics.) To politicians’ dismay, the electorate can be incredibly fickle, basing their decision on a candidate’s haircut or how attractive they are, a recent news story, or the desire to “send a message” to those in power. Usually it will come down to a combination of party loyalty, one or two memorable policies, and how you think your friends and family will vote. It is a conundrum faced by voters in democratic elections all over the world. The cross you put next to one of them, however, will shape the government for years to come. Many of them you’ve never encountered before.
You’re standing in the polling booth, crisp ballot paper in hand, a dozen or more names printed across it.