Who is standing in your constituency
By Mary Reid in Liberal Democrat Voice
Originally published by East Midlands Liberal Democrats
Who are the candidates standing in your constituency?
PPCs at East Midlands Spring Conference 2015
Crowd sourcing seems the obvious way to build an online database of PPCs, of all parties and none, across the country, and that is exactly what is happening on YourNextMP. Please check out your own constituency and submit, or correct, information about the Lib Dem candidate.
Some time ago I helped them to sort out my own constituency of Kingston & Surbiton, which appeared to have two candidates, one called Edward Davey and the other called Ed Davey. I got a pleasant response from a real human.
You can also download the complete list of candidates across the UK from the site for free.
YourNextMP is a project by Democracy Club, which is run by volunteers committed to making public data easily available, using open data techniques. They launched their first candidate site in 2010, and are adding new sites this time round. One of these is the useful MeetYourNextMP which lists hustings meeting around the country.
Already several other groups are re-using the data sourced by YourNextMP. For example, ElectionMentions tracks media coverage of candidates. VoteForPolicies uses the actual policies of the parties to create a survey format that identifies which party you agree with most; it then embeds the data from YourNextMP to see how other people have responded from your own constituency and who your candidates are.
Democracy Club is also compiling a database of candidate CVs, so do make sure that your Lib Dem candidate is covered.
* Mary Reid is the Monday Editor on Lib Dem Voice.