Voteswap - or #SwapmyVote?
It was great to see voteswap.org getting some good exposure yesterday - we welcome them with open arms to the growing movement for a better democracy. There is much to applaud in the platform, not least some great analysis and statistical integration.
As BuzzFeed UK notes, "The problem, however, occurs when you enter in a seat where both Labour and the Greens might win and users are told to vote based on their principles. So Labour supporters are never told to vote for the Greens in seats they might actually win.". We at Swap my Vote believe in a vote swapping platform as a strategy to affect one or more of a number of shifts in how democracy functions. We are keen to distinguish this from tactical voting which, while valid in its own right, is relatively limited in what it achieves in any given electoral cycle.
Further, we believe that by focusing our innovations purely on the left, we risk making electoral reform a partisan aim - where better representation and democracy should be the province of all.
Lastly, and importantly, we believe in using social media transparently to introduce voters to each other, putting all the power we can back into voters' hands - and starting to create a totally new paradigm of a ‘Sharing Democracy’.
However it happens, Internet enabled vote swapping is clearly an idea whose time has come. Together let’s build a richer and more representative system - and a better future.
http://swapmyvote.uk
#swapmyvote
