Dr. Manès Weisskircher, political scientist and head of the BMBF junior research group REXKLIMA at TU Dresden, has developed a digital voting aid for the upcoming city council elections in Dresden on 9 June. This was initiated by Prof. Dr. Christian Stecker from TU Darmstadt, who, as a scientist, supports election aids for various German municipalities together with the non-profit project VOTO.

VOTO is a digital platform for creating online voting aids based on scientific findings. It works in a similar way to the well-known Wahl-O-Mat of the Federal Agency for Civic Education, but is characterized by regionality. Together with scientists such as Dr. Weisskircher, voting aids can also be offered for elections with a smaller electorate, such as the local elections in Dresden. After around 1.5 weeks, more than 10,000 users have already used the Dresden voting aid.

The principle is simple: VOTO presents political theses to which users can respond with approval, rejection or neutrality according to their personal views. The parties standing for election have also previously responded to the theses along the same lines, so the application can then determine how closely the user's own position matches that of the parties. This alignment is expressed as a percentage and can therefore assist in deciding for or against a party. Furthermore, in some cases the parties have issued statements on individual theses, which voters can view via VOTO.

It is important that the theses reflect as many of the topics as possible that play a central role in the municipal election campaigns of all parties. To ensure this, Dr. Weisskircher and the VOTO team studied the individual election manifestos intensively in advance, identified important topics on this basis and formulated the theses for the VOTO survey. As a result, all citizens of Dresden now have the opportunity to inform themselves in a politically neutral manner. The aim of the VOTO election aid is in particular to help draw attention to the relevance of local politics and the city council elections.

To the VOTO for the Dresden city council elections