Can cause confusion: The Wahl-O Mat Image: dpa
Voting aid on the Internet can also cause confusion. Political scientist Christian Stecker from TU Darmstadt explains the need for simple questions, the difficulty of differentiation and the consequences for the election result.
Mr. Stecker, many. Those who describe themselves as conservative voters feel wrongly pushed into the AfD corner by the results of the Wahl-O-Maten for the state elections in Hesse. Can you understand and explain the uneasiness about the alleged online voting decision aid, which shows the user the proximity to the parties in percentage points after 38 questions about political views?
There are various explanations. First of all, the questions of the Wahl-O-Mate are entirely based on the basic democratic order. As a result, they do not illuminate the entire spectrum that the AfD covers. If, for example, the Wahl-O-Mat poses a relatively moderate question as to whether foreigners who are required to leave the country should be consistently deported, then this measuring instrument cannot capture the far more extreme positions of the AfD. And at this level of questions that are harmless with regard to democracy and the rule of law, there is no possibility of differentiation from the Union or the FDP. This is the problem of the scale, which is made even worse because I can only indicate “Agree”, “Neutral” and “Disagree” both as the party that provides the answers for the Wahl-O-Mate also as a voter.
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