Tag Archives: political

Humber Elections

2015 is an election year in the UK, we have a chance to change our government through exercising our democratic right to vote.

To do this effectively we need to know who is standing to represent us and what views they hold on particular subjects.

This information is usually contained in a manifesto which, if the candidate is attached to a political party, is written in conjunction with the party members.

At the last general election, in 2010, the national voter turn out was around 65%, of which the two parties currently governing managed to get about 60% of that vote. So they actually represent around 36% of the population..

Anyone who has any understanding of democracy will realise this is not an ideal position from which to elect a governing party, this lack of representation is leading more and more people to disengage totally from the political landscape. We won’t mention the discourse people feel with the whole of the political set.. That’s another argument!

Engagement of the younger generation has always been poor, with the last election just 52% of 18-24 yr olds voting, these are the very people who will be most affected by the results of any election, it’s their very future which you’re voting on. Due to the very nature they don’t vote in the same numbers as the older generation means that the prospective MP’s don’t court the votes of the young.

Their views are mostly ignited and political promises of the MP’s are usually skewed towards the elderly as they are more likely to vote.

I want to help engage more voters into the political system to chose their future which is why I’ve converted the excellent election application created by Adrian Short.

Adrian is well known for building excellent community engagement through his multiple web applications, on this occasion he created an application to show the results of the various elections in his home town of Sutton.

I’ve converted his application from the Ruby language he wrote it in to the php based Laravel MVC framework. I’ve also placed it under the same leftcase licence that Adrian’s original software was released under.

The source code can be found on github.

The application can be seen at http://humberdata.org/elections

It will allow you to view the results of the elections, the parties, the candidate and their candidacies, it will link them all together and provide a means to find party manifestos.

You’ll also be able to find your nearest polling station by entering your postcode and links to how to register to vote.

Many thanks have to go to Adrian for creating the original code base for me to copy from, it’s so much easier not having to reinvent the wheel!