Introducing http://www.boards.ie/vote

Could all of us on Boards.ie predict how the country will vote in the General Election?

Given the size of Boards.ie - 2.225 million unique visitors in January 2011, over 415,000 members registered, over 190,900 active, and over 28,700 people having posted on the site over 128,500 times in the last 7 days - we thought it would be interesting to see just how accurate we could be.

We've put together http://www.boards.ie/vote to see just how this might work.



Our election simulator invites all Boards.ie members to place a vote as they will in the General Election for candidates and parties. Only Boards.ie members can use the site.

You can vote for your candidates, decide to spoil your vote or just let us know you're undecided. We'll total the votes in the same way as it will be in the General Election (the Droop quota method and the Single Transferable Vote system of Proportional Representation) and update the results every hour.



We'll also be allowing people to check the Latest National Results and see who's doing well in their local constituency.

Coupled with our general election discussions and other innovations we hope to introduce , we're hoping this will remind people of the importance of having a vote and using it.



WHERE HAS ALL THE DATA COME FROM?

The simulator went live at 16:00 on Friday 4 Feb, 2011. We've been testing out our first go at this with our moderators over the last couple of days. All of our information is public information, uploaded with thanks to TheJournal.ie

HOW ACCURATE IS IT?

While we hope it will be fairly representative, we are realistic in terms of accuracies. Some Boards.ie members who vote in this may not actually be eligible to vote in the actual election.

We also know some people may go to the trouble of registering duplicate accounts to game the system. We'll do our best to monitor the site and identify offenders, but because this is the first time we've done this, it's difficult to predict what the results will be.

IS MY VOTE PRIVATE?

Details of your votes or preferences are NOT available to any members, moderators, Administrators or the Community Managers of Boards.ie, nor to any political parties, partners, advertisers or affiliates.

It will not be recorded on your public profile. It is recorded in our database in the same way as PM's and Private Forum messages, only accessible by our technical team.

HOW CAN I CONTACT YOU?

We'd love to hear any constructive feedback you have. If you need to contact us, just post below or drop us a line at hello@boards.ie and we'll do our best to help.

If you spot any errors or omissions, please let us know here.

Your support, help and input is appreciated