Make an informed decision with Policy Local

A tool developed by a team of Victoria University of Wellington alumni is designed to help voters in the upcoming local body elections make an informed decision.

Policy Local shows who is running for local government election in each area and what they stand for.

Chris McIntyre, along with other Victoria University of Wellington alumni Asher Emanuel, Ollie Neas, and former Salient designer Racheal Reeves, are part of Policy, a company which launched their first policy tool in 2017 for the New Zealand general election. Several other Victoria University of Wellington alumni worked on the tool, including Michael Graham, Stella Blake-Kelly and Max Soar.

“The success of our 2017 tool showed us that there is a real appetite for simple election format presented in a clear, engaging format. We tried to stick with what works: simple, trustworthy information presented in a beautiful, easy-to-use format,” says Chris.

Policy Local covers 573 local elections, and includes 48,000 policies, provided by councillors and council hopefuls in the three weeks leading up to the launch of the site.

“Local body elections are highly fragmented. There is no centralised source of truth of electoral boundaries, number of seats in each election, the type of electoral system, and whether any of these details have changed since the last election,” says Chris.

“Navigating this landscape to assemble a simple, nation-wide tool was complex.”

A majority of the more than 3,600 candidates across the country have participated in Policy Local.

The potential for deepening political awareness, particularly among young people, has been the driving force behind Policy. Recent research shows that a lot of young non-voters want to vote but find it difficult to know who to vote for.

“More than 80 percent wanted more information about the candidates. Young people know elections of all types are important but struggle to know what candidates or parties actually stand for, and how they compare to each other. We hope Policy Local fills that gap,” says Chris.

Having initially been supported by the University’s Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, Policy has now branched out into international elections, developing a similar tool in Belgium for their most recent national election. To ensure a wide audience for their tools, they launched with a publishing partner, and in this case online site The Spinoff became attached in early 2019.