The Straight Choice is an online collection of election literature from across the country, aiming “to create a live visualization of the flood of party political leaflets as they are delivered across the country during an election campaign”.
Whilst the origins of the name may grate with those Lib Dems who don’t wholly accept Peter Tatchell’s account of the 1983 Bermondsey by-election, the idea is an excellent one from the people who brought you sites like They Work for You, Public Whip, Planning Alerts and What do they know? (the last allowing you to search and submit Freedom of Information requests).
The Straight Choice is a great idea. With a decent cross-section of literature uploaded from all the political parties, it should allow the political machines to be held to account, spot parties saying different things in different places, illuminate different styles of campaigning in different areas and provide a valuable archive of literature all too often lost. It could also identify how far voters in safe constituencies are being taken for granted (or saved from the dead tree avalanche, depending on how you look at it).
But there’s a problem.
It’s been going for nearly a year, over which time tens of thousands of different leaflets, letters and other pieces of election literature have been created and pushed out to the eager, and sometimes less than eager, voters.
Over that time, which covers last year’s local elections, Euro elections and the run up to the General Election this year, fewer than 800 items have been uploaded. True, that’s a big advance on the five leaflets it had last time we reported on it, but still not great.
It’s not necessarily a problem, but it can produce a very distorted picture. It might be that leaflets in an area are uploaded by a partisan supporter of one party, giving an impression that would be very different to someone who saw all the literature from all the parties in context.
In my constituency, for example, only three leaflets have been uploaded (two of them by me, last year). The Lib Dems alone must have put out the best part of a hundred different leaflets and letters since then, and we’ve had many others from the Conservatives plus a few from UKIP, the BNP, the Greens and even one from Labour – so I accept my share of the blame in not uploading more.
If the project is to fulfil its potential, it needs a lot more leaflets uploaded (photograph or scan the leaflet and upload the piccie). Not just the opposition ones that annoyed you (with obligatory seething commentary) but a proper cross-section.
- Leaflets where the authors try to set a new standard for tedium and poor writing.
- Christmas cards and hand written letters.
- Negative leaflets.
- Leaflets with amusing party leader photos.
Got a pile of leaflets and an hour to spare? Why not do your bit – and I’ll try to do mine too.
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“TheStraightChoice.org has a similar genesis, of needing to preserve and publicize a series of remarkable LibDem leaflets I was seeing after I joined the local Green Party.” – author
“Whilst the origins of the name may grate with those Lib Dems who don’t wholly accept Peter Tatchell’s account of the 1983 Bermondsey by-election.”
Actually, I think Tatchell’s account of the Bermondsey by-election is quite fair and even-handed. It is the subsequent Labour attempts to whitewash their own party’s torrid role in that campaign that I resent.
Edward – I think that makes the point very well as to why we need a good cross-section of leaflets from all parties across the country and not a misleading sample from one party in one place supplied solely by people with an axe to grind.
Sorry the straight choice should be consigned to the dustbin of history because any site that wishes to be considered some sort of independent site of record cannot have such a ludicrous name.
There is a site that does similar for parliamentary elections that has the entirly dull name: http://www.by-elections.co.uk/
Yes, it is a pretty rubbish site (not just in its name).
I’d strongly discourage Lib Dems from posting their own leaflets on this site (which is after all only read by other politicos) but to continue to monitor it from time to time to:
a) see what your opponents are up to
b) see if you can identify which of your opponents are seeing which of your own literature
but don’t post your own stuff up there!
@footsoldier: why shouldn’t Lib Dems post their own leaflets on it? If we’re putting out leaflets we would be ashamed of people reading online, I think we should change the leaflets.
Re. “leaflets with amusing party leader photos”, how about Nick Clegg and David Cameron as Zaphod Beeblebrox? http://www.thestraightchoice.org/leaflet.php?q=476
The Cambridge Universities Labour Club has used that photoshopped picture at least twice in its literature so far.
I agree with Niklas. I think it is a real shame TheStraightChoice hasn’t proved more popular. I helped run a similar initiative in 2005 and the Scottish elections in 2007 and it was a really interesting insight into how party politics operates.
I’m with Dan – Until they change the deliberately provovative name I won’t upload anything of mine there
Perhaps they should allow people to upload pdf files if they want people to partake they should make it easier.