Website Puts Your Questions to Mayoral Candidates

It’s called Ask Away, and that’s exactly what the designer of a local body election website forum wants prospective voters to do by putting questions to the six Wellington mayoral candidates.

The website, designed by final-year Massey visual communication design student Meg Howie from the College of Creative Arts, then allows 12 hours for candidates to respond.

A question of the day to mayor Celia Wade-Brown and challengers Rob Goulden, John Morrison, Karunanidhi Muthu, Jack Yan and Nicola Young will be selected based on voter demand, measured through the number of Facebook likes each question received to the website.

Ms Howie (22), who is originally from Nelson, says questions are already being prepared for loading onto the website, which goes live on Friday. The first question will then be selected over the weekend ready to be put to candidates first thing on Monday.

The entire process effectively hands the discussion over to the voters and lets them set the agenda, she says. “It’s about putting the pressure on candidates to be responsive and listen, but doing it in a format which is easy and offers value for them,” she says.

“It’s also about including the people who are less informed, and who don’t know how local body politics affects them and don’t have in-depth knowledge about the issues. If you don’t have a question to ask, you can vote for questions that are important to you. By voting up a question to increase its likelihood of getting answered, you’re helping to shape the discussion for this election.”

The website also enabled voters and candidates alike to engage with each other via a social media forum that was “a low cost but effective way of meeting.”

Ms Howie, plans to expand her website initiative to ask questions of MPs at central government level in time for the 2014 general election.

‘Voter participation levels in New Zealand are rapidly declining and we need to do something about it,” she says.

Organisations such as Generation Zero, Victoria University and the Enspiral Network, which volunteered to build the website, have been involved with promoting it.

To have your say at the local body elections go to askaway.co.nz

ENDS

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell:
On What John Banks And Nick Smith Have In Common

The defence that John Banks has been offering to the charges of electoral fraud – that he didn’t read the document he signed, and therefore lacked the necessary criminal intent – is a fairly standard example of political business as usual.

At a time when political power is being centralised downtown in the Executive, responsibility is being re-located to the suburbs. The Beehive seeks to operate as a blame free, shame free environment. At all times, plausible deniability is to be maintained.

Being able to put distance between the Minister and the actions/outcomes/political fallout of policy is not simply the last desperate resort of scoundrels, but the first resort of the foot soldiers in ministerial service... More>>