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GE2019 Election Tech Handbook
✏️ Edit this document to make it better ✏️
A crowdsourced resource for technologists building things for the general election
blame this on The London College of Political Technology at Newspeak House
Projects
Political Data
Events & Community
Signal Group ↗️
WhatsApp Group ↗️
How to use this handbook
1. Join Signal Group (or old WhatsApp) group for updates: ElectionTechHandbookChat
1. the main group is for announcements related to the handbook there’s also an open chat group.
2. also there’s a facebook group electiontechhandbook.uk/fb
3. you can also hassle @nwspk
2. If you’re (thinking of) building something to do with politics or the upcoming election, add it to the list below. These can be partisan or non-partisan, free or paid, almost finished or just ideas looking for contributors - stick them down anyway.
1. there is a comprehensive library of political data here that might be helpful: electiontechhandbook.uk/data
2. if you’ve never done any political campaigning before, read this: how to make a difference in an election
3. check what you’re doing is legal: Campaigning Legal Guide: Politics, Elections and Lobbying
4. if you’re collecting user data, please do so responsibly: responsibledata.io/resources/handbook
3. If you’re not sure what to do but you want to get involved:
1. check out the community page for online groups, meetups, etc: electiontechhandbook.uk/community
2. have a read through the projects listed below - they probably need your help
3. peruse the datasets page for inspiration: electiontechhandbook.uk/data
4. If you’re organising meetups, hackathons, groups or doing any kind of online or offline organising of technologists, add the details here: electiontechhandbook.uk/community
5. Share this handbook far and wide ❤️
e.g. retweet this: https://twitter.com/nwspk/status/1169150244833103872
Election Results
Non-partisan data infrastructure
Voter Registration & Turnout
Targeted Political Advertising
Voter Education
Disinformation & Misinformation
Tactical Voting/Campaigning
Filterbubble Breakers
Campaigns
Campaigning & Organising Tools
Security
Messaging
Monetisation
Visualisation
Prediction
Project Ideas - looking for people
Domain Names
Misc
Non UK projects - Worth taking ideas from
Projects (add missing ones!)
Election Results & Analysis
Live map of election results in London
www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/who-runs-london/general-election/2019 - also available as an embeddable map, contact [email protected]
ERS Election Results Hub
http://ge2019.electoral-reform.org.uk/ Election results UK wide, regions and nations and constituency level
Triangle plot of election results
https://drive.google.com/file/d/127SY1at9oEc-wD-fJqHqtg6HXrO-Tidm/view?usp=sharing - plot of Con v Lab v LD (England only) - [email protected] or @sjorford on Democracy Club Slack
Free live-updating embeddable visualisations of election results
https://flourish.studio/2019/11/26/charts-for-the-uk-elections-2019/ from Flourish - these are based on the live results collection done by Democracy Club volunteers. (You can also see a visualisation of when results were recorded by the top contributing volunteers over election night.)
Data Infrastructure
Democracy Club
democracyclub.org.uk - we are a community that produces useful datasets for UK elections; candidates, polling station locations, hustings, manifestos, and more! If you want to help out, join us on slack.democracyclub.org.uk and check out democracyclub.org.uk/quests
mySociety
mysociety.org - we are a not-for-profit social enterprise that provides technology, research and data to help people to be active citizens, including:
* theyworkforyou.com A tool to check any MP’s recent voting records[a] as well as their historical voting archive. registered interests, appearances and full profile information. API at https://www.theyworkforyou.com/api/.
* writetothem.com helps you identify your representative and contact them — and offers a ‘write to your MP’ interface that can be added to any website.
* mapit.mysociety.org is an API service which matches geographic points to constituencies - ideal for showing your users who their MP is.
Policy Tracker
policytracker.org.uk - tracks progress on all of the government’s manifesto promises, includes explainers and ways to get more involved. @ukpolicytracker.
https://voteforpolicies.org.uk/blog/2019-wrap-up-good-result-for-vfp-bad-result-for-democracy
TwittElection
twittelection.co.uk - we’re creating 650 Twitter lists, each of which will contain the candidates for a constituency (using Democracy Club data to build these lists). Allowing people to easily follow the candidates.
Tweet your Candidate
tweetyourCandidate.com - postcode lookup to find list of candidates social media accounts - includes option for pre-filled tweet campaigns and lists previous MP and their majority.
PoliMonitor
https://www.polimonitor.com/ - PoliMonitor tracks all 10,000+ Parliamentarians in Europe - and hopefully soon all the 5,000+ in North America - as well as 15,000+ UK Journalists. fWe also added lists of around 2,000+ candidates for the 2017 GE and also the European Parliament election this year to our system (that was 4 months of research!) This means anyone can search what candidates have said over the past few and get a free alert each day if they talk about areas of interest. A useful campaign tool during an election, if you’re trying to get GE candidates to make a pledge on a certain issue. Visit the site to create a free account, a free alert, and also start a free trial of our premium tools. Or email [email protected] if you have a question, idea or would like to work with us. We hope to have completed our GE Candidate research by 12th November. Please get in touch if you’d like access to it to create other tools and services or conduct research. UPDATE - We have 1133 Candidate Handles so far.
Open Access
https://openaccess.transparency.org.uk/ Who is meeting government, when and for what purpose? Search by Minister, Department, organisation and more. Data from UK Gov website and up-to-date with Q2 2019, downloadable in CSV format.
Who’s Lobbying
http://whoslobbying.com/ - Who's Lobbying is a place to access data about lobbying activity in the UK without having to navigate; dense, difficult-to-navigate websites and hard to find PDF documents.
Members Interests
http://www.membersinterests.org.uk
Vote for Policies
https://voteforpolicies.org.uk/ Non partisan website that shows policies and gives information on which parties best match your policy preferences. Party’s policies are presented anonymously.
https://voteforpolicies.org.uk/blog/2019-wrap-up-good-result-for-vfp-bad-result-for-democracy
Many more data projects like this at electiontechhandbook.uk/data
Voter Registration & Turnout
Voter Registration Performance Statistics
https://www.gov.uk/performance/register-to-vote - How many people have registered to vote today? Official stats from gov.uk
Votey McVoteFace
https://mcvoteface.org.uk - Just 2% of boaters are registered to vote. Voter registration tool for boaters suggesting where and how to register to vote, in order to vote most effectively against Conservative candidates in marginals, based on location.
Puppy.Rodeo
https://puppy.rodeo/ - There's no time for a puppy rodeo, but there is time to register to vote!
Votebot.uk
https://votebot.uk/- facebook chat bot that helps you register to vote and encourage friends to register and vote
Apply to vote by post
https://www.onlinepostalvote.uk/ - General tool. Currently in beta
https://www.postalvote.labour.org.uk - Tool to walk through registering for a postal vote, run by the Labour Party.
https://www.postalvote.conservatives.com - Tool to walk through registering for a postal vote, run by the Conservative Party.
Vote Tracker
https://votetracker.co.uk/index.html - track how many people have registered to vote across different electoral cycles
VoteReminder
https://votereminder.uk/ - a simple way to add a calendarndex.html - trac invite / reminder to your Apple, Google, Yahoo! or Outlook calendar. Uses Democracy Club data where available to include polling station location based on postcode.
VoteEarly
http://www.voteearly.org.uk - A rebranding of postal voting. Why spend time queuing up on the day when you could vote early? Non partisan - can be used by any organisation. Facebook Ads/ messaging/ assets to promote are here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17BFbhhOwrYy61Qq4CNqke8HqxSd0ylCm8I8ao_oIpGE/edit?usp=sharing
Everyone.Vote
https://www.everyone.vote - a printable poster to help people register to vote.
Teachers for Turnout
https://www.teachersforturnout.org.uk/ Inspired by the US campaign a website with information and resources to help teachers and lecturers help their students to turnout and vote. Non-partisan.
Democracy Club Research: Who’s Missing? (2018)
https://democracyclub.org.uk/reports/whos_missing/ or Google Doc version for comments
An overview of existing research on underrepresentation in voter registration, candidacy, informedness and turnout.
See also 2016 blog posts on voter registration and young people: who? what works? and what could be done differently?
House of Commons Library Research: Political disengagement in the UK: who is disengaged? (2019)
https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-7501
This Commons Library Briefing Paper provides information about which groups in the UK are considered to be politically disengaged, and why. The Commons Library is a great source for lots of election-related desk research!
Webroots Democracy Research: Online Voting
https://webrootsdemocracy.org/online-voting/ - Our research has found that a