Query regarding Candidate participation in Local Election threads

Orion

Mod note: I've split this post & the next from the Local Elections thread in Kildare forum as it is more appropriate to Feedback.

tHB

I passed on contact details (with permission) of three local candidates to the office. One of them just told me that this "invite" involves a fee to be paid to boards to take part in this process. Two of the three names I passed on are smaller parties who are funding their own campaigns and don't have the resources some other candidates would have. So I would find this fee to be counter-productive and makes this 'invite' more of an advertising forum available to those who can afford it to the exclusion of smaller parties or independent candidates.

Can someone from HQ comment on this and let us know the reasoning behind this? Having a fee of any kind makes this a flawed initiative and not every candidate will want to, or be able to, partake in it which is not democratic in my eyes.

Atomic Pineapple

Pretty poor form of Boards.ie to have a fee for something like this in my opinion, there are a lot of self funded candidates out there that would depend on having an open and free forum like Boards.ie to pass on their voice, real shame if boards are indeed charging a fee.

circular flexing

Orion wrote: »

partake in it which is not democratic in my eyes.

Who said boards is democratic?

Dav

Hello all,

You'll remember in the last general election, we invested some time into building a "voting" section and took a pretty accurate poll of how the nation would vote. We're going to do something similar again this year for the European Elections and Alvis is currently busy building a mini-site that will take care of this for us. But that's not to say we're leaving the local elections out - you'll see there are threads up on the regional forums asking the various communities what questions they intend to ask of the canvassers that may knock on their door over the coming weeks.

So I'd like to expand a little on our overall plan here in the office for the election.

First of all, we're talking to the parties about getting candidates signed up to the site as Verified Reps. We want them to consider Boards.ie another opportunity to talk to their constituents and to get their message out. We will, as I mentioned, roll out the mini-site to capture votes from our members on the European Election but this time we'll run it slightly differently to the General Election one which allowed voting all the time. We're hoping to have an "election day" on the site, maybe a week before the polls actually open so we've got a definitive set of data to work from and talk about. It's somewhat convenient that we have a news publication sitting beside us in the office, so there's one place that should cover it

On the local election side, I plan on taking a selection of the most popular questions in each region and posing them to the candidates in a Q&A - we might even get audio or video footage for it - that's not confirmed though. Doing a mini-site for the locals would just take up way too much time and more man hours than we have to spare and some of the regional forums on the site don't generate enough traffic to justify it anyway.

We're not doing this for free (to be honest, we can't afford to). At the moment, our Sales team is talking to some of the bigger party press offices about what we'd like to offer them - a combination of rep accounts for candidates and various other advertising stuff. The responses we have from them so far has been very positive so this pleases us.

For individual candidates and those without the support of a big party and so on, we're not pricing them out of things - the cost of a verified rep account on Boards for a small business or sole trader is €25 per month. So we're looking at €50 for any individual candidate for the 2 months run up to the election. How many posters (that no one looks at anyway) does €50 buy? Did you know that you have to then pay Eircom rental to hang posters on their poles? Setting up and verifying these accounts costs us time and the other areas we're working on for this election aren't magically appearing out of thin air This process has to pay for itself and we don't think it unfair to treat these verified accounts any differently to the businesses that use them and we certainly don't think that €50 is too much to ask for to talk to an audience as big as ours.

So that's an overview of what we're hoping to achieve, if you have any suggestions, we'd love to hear them.

The Hill Billy

Cheers Dav. There's a lot going on behind the scenes obviously with the mini-site development & engagement with the candidates throughout the regions. €50 certainly ain't too much to ask for access to boards.ie as a platform to engage with potential voters in a moderated environment.

Orion

Thanks Dav. That makes it clearer. I'll get back on to candidate that said this to me. The impression I got from him is that he was being sold advertising across DM sites not just a verified rep account. This may have got lost in the message. I'll clarify it with him and point him at this thread.

Dav

It's quite possible there was a miscommunication alright - we're still trying to finalise what sort of a package we're rolling out and as I mentioned, we're looking at offering something more substantial for parties who are more likely to be able to afford it.

Agent Smith

Would there be a discount for Candidates who have been a member for a significant amount previously?

Orion

You should be charged double

nesf

Agent Smith wrote: »

Would there be a discount for Candidates who have been a member for a significant amount previously?

I sincerely don't think this should happen. This isn't something where any favourtism should be shown to boardsies and honestly I don't see how one candidate is more worthy than another simply because they've an account that's several years old on here.

Boards.ie: Niamh

Agent Smith wrote: »

Would there be a discount for Candidates who have been a member for a significant amount previously?

I've just checked this for you - no discounts. These Rep accounts will be open to all candidates equally; this includes an equal cost across the board, if you'll pardon the pun

Ken.

Just a few quick question's.
If (for example) I was running in the election would I use this account or set up a new account?.
If I have to set up a new account as a 'candidate' account do I have to declare that I also am 'X'?.

Dav

We'd ask you to sign up for a new verified account for any election business. I wouldn't ask you to publicly declare that you are also member X unless you wanted to and if the office team was aware, we'd certainly respect your privacy.

Ken.

Dav wrote: »

We'd ask you to sign up for a new verified account for any election business. I wouldn't ask you to publicly declare that you are also member X unless you wanted to and if the office team was aware, we'd certainly respect your privacy.

Cool, I'm not running or anything but I'd be worried that if a candidate were already a member and had to declare it someone could go back through their posts and bash them over the head for some innocuous thing they said a few years ago.