Election to European Parliament: VoteMatch Europe - Which party should I vote for?

Under our news column we will present various projects of Politeia member organizations around the Elections to European Parliament.Today it’ s the turn of the Instituut for Political Participation. Projectmanager Jochem de Graaf will present us the project ‘Vote Match’ 2009, which was launched on April 29th in Brussels.

Politeia:
What is Vote-Match?

Jochum de Graaf:
VoteMatch is a political preference online web tool, offering users a political profile and potential advice by taking side on 30 statements.

Politeia:
By whom was this tool developed?

Jochum de Graaf:
The European VoteMatch was modelled after the ‘Stemwijzer’, a product of the ‘Institute for Political Participation’. This very successful political preference test origins from the Netherlands, where it developed over the past fifteen years into the most used internet site in election times. During the last Parliamentary elections in 2006 it reached more than 4,7 mill. users. ‘Votematch’ has additionally successfully been introduced over the past decade in other countries as for example Germany, France and Switzerland.

Politeia:
‘VoteMatch Europe’ is an cooperation project of different organization. Could you please tell us who is all involved?

Jochum de Graaf:
‘VoteMatch Europe’ is the product of a network of around 15 organizations from different EU-countries and ‘Café Babel’, the Paris based multilingual current affairs online magazine. Partners are from old and new Europe and the Politeia member organization ‘Center for Liberal Studies’ is the Bulgarian partner.

Politeia:
What is the intention of this tool? To tell me which party I should vote for during the upcoming elections to European Parliament?

Jochum de Graaf:
VoteMatch Europe is first of all an educational tool. It has the potential to promote European citizenship, to better inform citizens about elections for the European Parliament, to teach voters about the programmatic differences between the contesting parties and to increase by this the voter turn out.
On the site: http://www.votematch.eu you will find the VoteMatch in six different languages :
I would say: try it out!

Politeia:
Thank you Mr. de Graaf for this interview!