Voting Aid Application (VAA)
By answering 25-35 statements, you can discover which political parties closely match your point of view and which are further removed. A useful and popular tool for those trying to form a quick insight in to the political landscape and their own standing in it
'De Stemtest 2024'
In collaboration with UAntwerpen, UClouvain, VRT, Mediahuis, RTBF, IPM and Bits of Love we created ‘De Stemtest 2024’
A VAA for the 2024 elections.
To help guide the voter in the political arena, in the lead up to the elections, we developed no less then 12 different voting aids: general, regional, federal, European, Brussles-based and one aimed specifically at young people. all of these in both Dutch and French.
Because of the VAA
- Voters reflect, discuss and inform themselves about major political themes and challenges.
- Political parties have to take a stance on certain topics, making them come clean on more topics than just the ones they want to associate temselves with throughout their campaign.
Building VAA's for over 20 years
Michiel Nuytemans was part of the creation of the very first VAA in 2003. More than 500.000 voters used the aid, and it didn’t take long before ‘De Stemtest’ was fully integrated in Flanders. Eight editions and millions of users later, we have build extensive expertise realising these projects.
That’s because developing these VAA’ s perfectly allings with our DNA: a combination of political knowledge and the know-how and expertise regarding technology, software and digital trends.
We operate within an extensive national and international network of VAA-builders and scholars in order to keep educating ourselves, this way striving to achieve the very best possible VAA. We hold quality in high regard and consistently comply with the norms for VAA’ s established by scholars in the Lausanne Declaration of 2013.
We are proud of the scientific approach we use to create these VAA’ s, together with our partners. The questionnaires, scientific research and benchmarking we employ, result in one-of-a-kind VAA’ s. This way we can really make a difference, and that doesn’t go unnoticed: FeWeb Excellence Awards, recognising the most high-performative digital projects in Belgium, awarded us in 2019.
We’d love to use all of our expertise to create more VAA’s, on different levels, themes or for different audiences.
A voting aid in your class
A voting aid is a educational and interesting tool. It can be used in schools or classes for newcomers,… To create further use for this, we made a class-VAA for four different countries.
As an educator or suprevisor you can create a voting aid for a class, which everyone can fill out individually. subsequently, you can collectively review these answers and discuss the arguments used. This way, it can spark a classroom conversation. Pupils can also fill in the test with a party in mind, teaching them to predict party stances.
Put your topic on the map
AI, poverty, sexual wellbeing, healthcare, ..? A voting aid can help put a specific topic on the map and paint a picture regarding party stances on these topics.
Tree company developed a number of these thematic tests. Both in collaboration with different media-groups (VRT, Mediahuis, IPM, RTBf,..), and with civil society organisations (SAAMO, Sensoa,…). All flemish political parties have opted to cooperate in these projects. They took postition and put forward arguments for the different statments.
'De Stemcheck'
We zorgden, samen met honderden medewerkers van Mediahuis, voor een primeur in Vlaanderen door de ontwikkeling van 274 verschillende versies van de Stemcheck in 2018, een stemhulp voor bijna elke Vlaamse gemeente. Voor de gemeenteraadsverkiezingen van oktober 2024 werken we opnieuw samen met Mediahuis aan een Stemcheck.
Together with hundreds of local correspondents of Mediahuis, we debuted 274 unique versions of ‘De Stemcheck’ in 2018, a VAA for almost every individual municipality in Flanders. A first in Belgium then. In 2024, we again collaberate with Mediahuis in the creation of a local ‘Stemcheck’.
International work
For years, We have been active in the international VAA-market. We are a leading figure in the European Votematch network, where we collaborate in creating ‘European’ statements for usage in various VAA’s, in order to gather compareable data troughout Europe.
Innovations we implement in Belgium, often find footing in other major VAA’s worldwide. The selection of the statements in The Netherlands has been reinforced with our know-how. In Switzerland, we help to build the software necessary to collect responses from the many electoral candidates.