We’ll all start to receive election leaflets over the coming weeks – in fact it could be quite a blizzard given the Isle of Wight has eleven candidates standing.
We suspect that a few people will read them all, other glance at them, many will just chuck them in the bin – but STOP!
Before you casually toss them away, take a photo of them and upload them to The Straight Choice.
The site aims to become the depository of all of the election leaflets, letters, or flyers around the UK, for several interesting reasons.
Why?
The ideas behind it are many, including
- A comparison between what the candidate promises in the lead up to the election and what they actually deliver.
- Comparing different wards around the UK, showing how the same party may use different political messages in different areas, depending on who they think they’re ‘selling’ to.
- How different leaflets might be used by different parties during the election.
- Just to get to see all of the leaflets of the candidates for the Island, it they don’t all get delivered Island-wide.
It’s easy to do
We had an English Democrats leaflet delivered yesterday and uploaded it. It only took about five minutes to complete.
When you put your postcode in, don’t worry it won’t identify your house on the Site. It’s shown on the map as a very rough approximation, certainly far enough away for you to feel safe.
If digital photos or scanning aren’t your thing, you could perhaps get help with it at the library, or if you’re not happy with that, you can post them to The Straight Choice c/o Scraperwiki, LSP 2, 146 Brownlow Hill, Liverpool L3 5RF, and mark each leaflet with the postcode (or postcode district) it was delivered to.
Analyse
If you want to help the collective, they’ve also got the ability to analyse random leaflets from around the UK, on its content – Policy/Personality; Negative/Positive; Single issue/Multiple issue;Candidate/Party; Local/National.
