convincible.org

Glassbooth.org is an interesting website that asks your positions on some issues and then shows you which candidate best matches your opinions.
It’s a fun and maybe useful tool.
But personally, I was somewhat unhappy with the tool, as it seems really designed for voters with specific concerns about bullet issues of the day. It doesn’t take into account more nuanced positions or the philosophy of the candidates. Or what role the candidate thinks the president should have in government or on the issues. For instance, it asks about “Iraq and Foreign Policy” but doesn’t say anything about balancing the roles of our government, military vs internal, security vs social programs, etc. The issue of “Crime and Punishment” is reduced to only being about the death penalty. All of the issues are reduced like this to a slot question. Also, the quiz makes you value the various questions, without any judgment on whether the president can effect the item. Are we to assume the president who has one of these opinions will actually desire to make the change expressed? Without regard to the the constitutionality or the priority for the administration?
Just the way the first question is phrased is a problem; “Add points to the issues you find most important”. Shouldn’t the question be, “Add points to the issues int he way you think the next president should prioritize them in their administration”? I know thats a lot more complicated, but it’s really a different question, and a more important one.

- Ryan’s comments below sent me back to glassbooth.org to poke around some more. He is correct, there is more depth there than appears at first glance. If you put all your points in 2 issues, say 10 points in each of the two, you get many more questions about those issues. Interesting. I just wish it would ask me all the questions about all the issues, then I’d have a better feeling about the “test”. Maybe if it matched everything, I would feel like it was seeing more into my philosophical similarities with the candidate. But one or just a few questions on an issue might just reveal a particular bias on a point issue on my or the candidates side. Regardless, Ryan is correct, this site is better developed than I first thought.