Happy Thursday everyone!
So this entire website started when I decided election promises couldn’t be trusted, and decided I was going to start tracking the work the different parties were doing and voting based on who’s been actively pushing the policies I agree with and not what they claim they’ll do if we just give them the keys to the country. Part of that has been a scoring system, giving points to parties for pursuing policies I like and taking them away for policies I don’t like.
And so it’s with great pleasure that I introduce a tool I’ve wanted to add to this website for a while now, the Commons Sense Vote Compass!
Here’s how it works.
On pages about legislation or weekly recaps you’ll see something like this:
This is your personal opinion tracker. If you like what you’ve just read, hit the Support button. If not, click Oppose! The party that created the topic you’re voting on will gain 1 point if you support it, and will lose 1 point if you oppose it. Whenever a vote is held on it parties will also gain/lose points for each vote held, depending on if they agree or disagree with you. (So a piece of legislation could be worth up to 4 points for the party that created it and 3 points for everyone else.)
After you’ve done this a few times head over to the Vote Compass (link in the sidebar or menu bar if you’re on mobile). There you’ll find the total scores of each party, giving you an idea of which ones are doing the most to create legislation you agree with.
Now there’s a few notes about this:
First, you have to have either an account here or a WordPress account to use this. I can’t track these scores if I don’t know who to tie the scores to, sorry!
Second, this is not a social media thing. Nobody should be able to see what your opinions are or what scores the different parties have for you. This is a personal tool and it’s going to stay that way.
Finally, I know it’s election time but this may not be an accurate representation of what the parties have done the last few years. I didn’t start this site until we were already halfway through the session and though I’ve been able to cover a surprising amount of legislation there’s still quite a bit I haven’t been able to get to. This is especially true for government legislation, which means the Liberals will be a bit under-represented here. (Government bills tend to be much larger and more time-consuming to cover. I’ve done what I can but it isn’t always possible to cover them).
What happens next
So for now the personal opinion trackers are only on a handful of pages. I’ll be spending the next few weeks getting posts updated to include them. With Session 44 now being completely ended because of the election I’ll also need time to update older posts to show that. Life has been extremely busy so I don’t really have a timeline on getting that done, but it’ll be before election day hits.
You likely won’t hear any more updates from me until after the election. I might decide to visit some legislation I haven’t covered during this Session just to help keep updates consistent when things are slow next session, I’m not entirely sure. We’ll see how things go. You’ll be seeing more government legislation with the next Session being covered as I’ll be going through it as the Session starts instead of coming in with a huge backlog like I did this time.
Thanks for sticking with me and I look forward to seeing you all after the election!
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