MANILA, APRIL 8, 2013 – If you’re still not sure about which senate candidate to vote on the May 13 national elections, website Politi-ko.com aims to help you.
The interactive website, initialized in late March and publicized on April 2, is developed by guys who call themselves “Fro” and “Hawk”. The site features a digital ballot where visitors can click on the issues they care about and would like their senate candidate to fight for once elected to office. The ballot features nine hot issues in the Philippines and for every statement the visitor is given five choices – strongly for, for, don’t care/no stance, against and strongly against. After the ballot is completed, the website generates the result, arranging senate candidates according to compatibility.
The nine issues highlighted in the website include: total gun ban, same-sex marriage, death penalty, divorce, anti-political dynasty, freedom of information, anti-cybercrime, sin tax and reproductive health.
“We wanted people to at least try to be more objective about voting and stick to the issues and platforms of candidates instead of voting based on personality, party affiliation or name recall,” Fro told adobo.
Although the site helps voters find out who supports their causes, a disclaimer on the website says:
“This recommended ballot is not a final solution for voting. We strongly recommend that you still do your own research about the listed candidates. It is also possible that the stances posted here will not hold, given how some politicians change their positions (sometimes more often than is socially acceptable).”
The site is supported by Fro’s and Hawk’s group network of friends who, as indicated in the website, “wish to remain anonymous”. Both developers also withheld their actual name for security purposes. When asked if they are open to advertisers to keep the site running, Fro said that they haven’t considered it before but they might. “But definitely not political ads,” Fro said.
Although politi-ko.com does not keep a tally of the results, they do keep track of the number of visitors on the site and as of this writing, they have recorded a total of 2,143 visitors to the site.
Their other project, rollcall.ph, keeps track of the attendance of representatives in sessions, updating voters on how their elected representatives are doing. However, a disclaimer on the site states:
“Each bar represents one session. Note that we treat roll call attendance differently from attendance. The former is required for quorum, and is akin to a teacher calling out students’ names in class, while the latter is written, and can be signed at any time.”
