EUvox is a state-of-the-art EU-wide voting advice application (VAA) for the 2014 elections to the European Parliament. The purpose of EUvox is to help citizens find the political party that best matches their own policy preferences and enable them to have quick access to information about the positions of all parties contesting the 2014 elections.
The objectives of EUvox are to raise awareness on the 2014 elections to the European Parliament, promote democratic participation, and empower citizens by allowing them to make an informed decision when casting their vote. EUvox 2014 like other VAAs is promoted via traditional and social media by inviting citizens to answer a short questionnaire regarding their policy preferences. Users are rewarded with a visualization of the political space of the election and their match to political parties contesting the election. Moreover, users will be able to see their match not only to parties in their country, but to parties across other EU member-states. In addition, users will be able to see how other people with similar political preferences intend to vote across the 28 EU member-states. The latter is an innovative social aspect of VAAs that was first introduced in 2012 by the PreferenceMatcher consortium (www.preferencematcher.org) of which the University of Twente is a founding member. EUvox is also available as a free cross-platform mobile phone (smartphone) application.
Partners and finance
EUvox is run by a consortium among four partners: Centre for Democracy Studies Aarau (ZDA) / University of Zurich, University of Twente, Cyprus University of Technology, Kieskompas B.V. / VU Amsterdam. The project is financially sponsored by grants from: The Directorate-General for Communication of the European Parliament and Open Society Initiative for Europe.
More information
For more information please contact Assistant Professor Kostas Gemenis, or UT Press advisor drs. Janneke van den Elshout, +31-6-13950017. The research is part of The Institute for Innovation and Governance Studies at the University of Twente.
