| abstract | - What is Choose4Greece? Choose4Greece is an online application that enables prospective voters to compare how their policy preferences overlap with the stated policy positions of the main Greek political parties. The idea behind such tools is to allow citizens to better define their own subjective, political preferences. The online system then matches the citizen's policy preferences with the stated (or academically coded) policy preferences of political parties. In doing so, another aim is to engage citizens and aid them in their vote choice by presenting them with a range of policy options and the parties' stance on those issues. There have been various applications with such tools, which are sometimes referred to as VAAs (Voting Advice Applications), across Europe and America. Unlike other tools, choose4greece does not provide 'voting recommendations' to its users. In fact, it provides a number of results based on different methods of calculating matches. In short, choose4greece focuses only on policies and omits other matters that we know influence the political preferences of citizens. It is therefore not designed to tell citizens how they should vote, only to allow them to see where they stand compared to the main candidates across a range of policy issues. How does it work? The mechanism is simple: prior to the election, the main parties were coded on their policy positions by a group of academic researchers. Users of the tool then fill in the same questionnaire and express their preferences. The system then matches the answers of the parties with those of the users. The end result is a ranking based on the degree of congruence between the parties and the user (for more technical details see item below on how the results are calculated). How independent is it? The choose4greece tool is a strictly academic project and is not affiliated with any political party or movement. The questionnaire has been designed by researchers at the Cyprus University of Technology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, the e-Democracy Centre, University of Zurich, University of Twente and University of Oxford. Political parties had no impact on the design of the project and all information was gathered by independent experts. Choose4greece was active to cover the Greek national elections of Masy 6 and June 17. The platform was in Greek and English.
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