Media Releases

Vote compass launches in Ontario

September 19, 2011

TORONTO, ON — Start­ing today, peo­ple will be able to log onto Vote Com­pass to find out how their views com­pare with those of the polit­i­cal par­ties in the upcom­ing provin­cial elec­tion.

Vote Com­pass invites users to respond to a series of ques­tions on polit­i­cal issues and pro­vides a per­son­al assess­ment in which their respons­es are com­pared to those of the polit­i­cal par­ties.

“This is pri­mar­i­ly an edu­ca­tion­al tool with the objec­tive of stim­u­lat­ing dis­cus­sion on issues and pro­mot­ing vot­er engage­ment,” said Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to Mis­sis­sauga polit­i­cal sci­en­tist, Peter Loewen, who is direc­tor of ana­lyt­ics for Vote Com­pass.

Vote Com­pass is offered in part­ner­ship with CBC and host­ed on the CBC web­site.  “Vote Com­pass was incred­i­bly pop­u­lar dur­ing the recent fed­er­al elec­tion, help­ing Cana­di­an increase their aware­ness of the issues and how their own atti­tudes line up with par­ty plat­forms,” said Jen­nifer McGuire, gen­er­al man­ag­er and edi­tor-in-chief, CBC News.  “As a pub­lic broad­cast­er, it is impor­tant for us to engage peo­ple in democ­ra­cy at all lev­els.”

More than 1 mil­lion Cana­di­ans used Vote Com­pass in the last fed­er­al elec­tion.

Oth­er spon­sors include the Mowat Cen­tre and the Cen­tre for the Study of Demo­c­ra­t­ic Cit­i­zen­ship.  Vote Com­pass is an aca­d­e­m­ic project devel­oped by a vol­un­teer team of Cana­di­an polit­i­cal sci­en­tists, over­seen by an advi­so­ry board com­prised of the country’s most promi­nent schol­ars in the study of elec­toral pol­i­tics.

Peo­ple can par­tic­i­pate in Vote Com­pass at votecompass.cbc.ca

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For more infor­ma­tion, please con­tact:

Kel­ly Hin­ton
Project Devel­op­ment Offi­cer
Vote Com­pass
Kelly@votecompass.ca
647–668-9937