Imagine a website called www.YourThirdParty.com. Think of it being somewhat of a counterpart to www.PoliticalCompass.org in that the core of the website would be a quiz assessing the political affinities of each site visitor.
The twist would be that, rather than aligning each site visitor to a political ideology, YourThirdParty.com would align each visitor to the platforms of national US "third parties." The output would not be coordinates on a plane, but rather an assignment of a third party to each quiz-taker.
Based on each person's quiz responses, the site could make three third party suggestions for that person to say, "In absence of Democrats and Republicans, your views correspond to The _________ Party."
As a final feature, the site would solicit each respondent's ZIP code and assign them to their corresponding congressional districts. At the results page, the person would be told how many other people within their particular congressional district share the same "recommended third party."
My theory here is that if people could see the actual, hard numbers in terms of how people in their district would actually vote if people stopped voting either Democrat or Republican, their voting patterns actually would change.
The benefits of this website would be to encourage voter participation as well as to encourage competition among political parties. As any good Stationary Waves reader knows, competition makes us all better off.
I would happily run such a website as a public service. In fact, some day I might. Until then, please feel free to take my idea and implement it yourself, if you like, even on a for-profit basis.
The twist would be that, rather than aligning each site visitor to a political ideology, YourThirdParty.com would align each visitor to the platforms of national US "third parties." The output would not be coordinates on a plane, but rather an assignment of a third party to each quiz-taker.
Based on each person's quiz responses, the site could make three third party suggestions for that person to say, "In absence of Democrats and Republicans, your views correspond to The _________ Party."
As a final feature, the site would solicit each respondent's ZIP code and assign them to their corresponding congressional districts. At the results page, the person would be told how many other people within their particular congressional district share the same "recommended third party."
My theory here is that if people could see the actual, hard numbers in terms of how people in their district would actually vote if people stopped voting either Democrat or Republican, their voting patterns actually would change.
The benefits of this website would be to encourage voter participation as well as to encourage competition among political parties. As any good Stationary Waves reader knows, competition makes us all better off.
I would happily run such a website as a public service. In fact, some day I might. Until then, please feel free to take my idea and implement it yourself, if you like, even on a for-profit basis.
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