Electoral search using the VerkiezingsKijker: an experience report

The Netherlands had parliamentary elections on November 22, 2006. We built a system which helped voters to make an informed choice among the many participating parties. One of the most important pieces of information in the Dutch election and subsequent coalition government formation is the party program, a text document with an average length of 45 pages. Our system provides the voter with focused access to party programs, enabling her to make a topic-wise comparison of parties' viewpoints. We complemented this type of access ("What do the parties promise?") with access to news ("What happens around these topics?") and blogs ("What do people say about them?"). We describe the system, including design technical details, and user statistics.