November 2nd, 2007
BREAKING NEWS: Glassbooth is popular
Whoa.
Glassbooth.org launched on Thursday at midnight with the hope that our users would find it valuable and helpful. The last few hours have solidified these hopes and then some.
Since, Glassbooth has been bombarded with traffic and positive feedback about the site. We love it, and are thrilled to see that Glassbooth has a real place in American democracy.
We are always insuring that you are getting the best experience on the site. The site is getting a lot of hits, and we are working to accommodate everyone, but we see you, and we’re on it.
Keep checking the site for more updates.
It is great to see a tool like this that is accurate and easy to use. I had no idea who Mike Huckabee was until I took the Glassbooth quiz.
Your poll has a serious error.
You have Ron Paul saying that he opposes a ban on late term abortions when his record and his quoted reply on that subject shows that he supports a ban on late term abortions. This significantly skews your results.
Fixed. Thank you.
Great idea! In 5 minutes this site not only determined the correct candidate based on the politician’s voting record and my beliefs, but also raised my awareness as to how strongly I feel about so many timely issues! I look forward to using Glassbooth.org again in upcoming elections and, if possible, including state and local elections.
I’m not sure I understand how the score relates to the candidate statements.
Let’s start with Gravel’s position on drugs he’s on record saying he would legalize marijuana. You consider legalizing marijuana to be in moderate opposition to federal drug raids on medical marijuana users?
His statement: “the war on drugs causes more poverty than anything else I can think of” is evidence of NEUTRALITY for supporting the war on drugs internationally?
Then on Ron Paul you equate “treat drug abuse as a medical problem instead of a crime” as moderate support for reducing drug penalties but in the case of Kucinich and Dodd who quibble over the difference between powder and crack cocaine penalties as strongly in support of reducing penalties.
I just don’t get it.
I enjoyed this, even if my best match (Kucinich) doesn’t have a prayer. I sent the link to friends and family, too, I think they will find it rather educational. In an era where so many people are so busy that they can’t or won’t do the research for themselves, sites like this one provide the chance to be at least a somewhat informed voter. Thank you.
It will be interesting to see the collective results. I hope you will make available some statistics revealing percentages. Another similar website garnered 500,000 responses and surprisingly, Dennis Kucinich was overwhelmingly the winner of the most matches. Interesting that he still gets so little coverage.
Your quiz revealed my dream candidate (Romney) except for one thing—I can’t stomach all that religion. He can’t get elected anyway—too smart and too right (in every sense of the word). Instead of wasting my vote on a loser, I would rather give it to someone I think has a real chance to win—Giuliani. This election is too important to take risks that might have me kicking myself the day after.
There is a major flaw in your site; it’s the first page, in which you *must* select criteria that are “more important” to you, and use them to “weight” the recommendation of the “matching candidate.”
This has the effect of disallowing testers from simply answering the questions on the following pages with no weighting at all, and thus finding out where the different candidates theoretically stand on the issues respective to the answers. What is needed is an explanation of your computational method. That is, for each of the questions, *without any weighting*, provide a list of the different candidates and how the site designers matched them up with all possible answers to each question.
*That* is the important thing when judging your site’s “non-partisan” nature. The fact that you seem to be hiding it, and then hiding it further by forcing people to weight their preferences, indicates to me that there is quite possibly something *very* partisan indeed about this website.
Publish your methodology. If you don’t, or if you delete this comment, I think that the question of whether your site is “non-partisan” or not speaks for itself.
I match with Dennis Kucinich. The problem is that it is not just the issues that make a candidate, but the person. Kucinich strikes me as someone whose ego exceeds what he has to offer — think Nader. Where was Kucinich after he lost last time? Certainly not out full time trying to save the country from GWB, like Howard Dean. He was licking his wounds, which was apparently more important to him. I would vote for someone with a considerably different take on the issues if they showed they had courage and integrity. Sadly, I don’t see any candidates, except Al Gore, who have both. I’m just saying …
Your site is fantastic. I plan to pass it on.
I was able to complete the survey, yet 2 friends couldn’t. The points kept going back to 0 and not accepting the choices. What’s wrong?
I just wanted to follow up on my earlier critical post. Since then I have been in contact with the press representatives of Glassbooth and heard what their plans are with regard to making their methodology and their rating system more transparent and more accessible to users of the site. I commend them highly on their responsiveness to this issue, and look forward to the sit improvements they mentioned. Consider my concerns about the site and its accuracy a thing of the past.
ANNE - Your friends may have script blocking turned on and that’s what is keeping the points from being added - at least it acted that way on my computer. Allowing glassbooth.org to run scripts should fix the problem.
Glassbooth - You guys have created a fantastic tool to help people figure out which candidate most closely matches their interests. I’ve forward this to several friends and they agree.
Yo- I got chris dodd- CT whatuppppppp
Your site is amazing! As someone who does not know alot about politics I am always trying to find a way to get a nonbiased perspective and that is EXACTLY what I received.
I want to share my scoring and issue weight but your website doesn’t provide a way to do that (everything else is absoutely perfect). I have a friend with whom I always thought I agreed 95% of the time but your poll put us at polar opposites.
thx
This site is very helpful and a great idea. I have noticed many people vote depending on one specific issue, but when looking at all the issues, the person you may not be in agreement with on one specific issue just may be the best candidate for you.
This site is probably one of the best things I’ve seen on the internet. A friend told me about it and I came and checked it out right away. I had never really thought about all of the issues out there that one should think about when choosing and candidate to support and vote for. I also never would have though that I would match up with one of the candidates that I did, but it made me think. This site is a great idea and I hope many people come and check it out. I’m definitely going to spread the word about it!
Thanks!