I just received an email from 38 degrees asking me to vote on which action the government should take to mitigate the effects of deep cuts to public services (see screenshot).
Fair enough… it strikes me as pretty odd that the previous government’s spending policy is being blamed for financial crisis that was really caused by risky financial instruments that don’t add real value(ok ok ok… so the previous government didn’t exactly discourage this sort of thing….).
Back to the matter at hand: in asking for a vote from a user, they’ve presented the voting so far right when you’re standing at the ballot box. I can imagine this does encourage people to vote, but it will also be influencing what they vote for: people naturally go for options that they see other people taking.
You could be swayed away from the issue you felt strongly about just by seeing what everyone else is doing, which isn’t representative of the issues you might care most about.