Support for Decision Making: Electoral Search

The Netherlands had parliamentary elections on 22 November 2006. We built a system which helps voters to make an informed choice among the 16 participating parties. One of the most important pieces of information in the Dutch election and subsequent coalition government formation is the party manifesto. This is a text document with an average length of 45 pages. Our system provides the voter with focused access to party programs: given a search term, the system displays a ranked list of relevant paragraphs from the programs. Ranking is possible by relevance or by party. By selecting only the parties of interest, the voter can make a topic-wise comparison of party view-points. The paper describes the system in full detail, including design, requirements, technical details, and user statistics. It can be used at www.verkiezingskijker.nl. The system is presented as a case-study in building applications which aid decision making.