We’re up to 551 votes cast. Here is the latest update. Please spread the word to get more people to vote.

Here are the updated results:

96% would cut administrators and/or supervisors
91% would eliminate the position of Elementary Assistant Principal
82% would make public the union contract details and negotiations
81% would eliminate and/or consolidate bus stops
80% would eliminate the position of CSE Chair
76% would eliminate one K-5 Library Media Specialist position
71% would eliminate the Teaching Learning Facilitator Position
71% would merge the superintendents and other executive staff for Irvington, Dobbs Ferry and Hastings to have one set of executive staff.
69% believe Irvington school taxes are unacceptably high and need to be lowered
65% would eliminate on school psychologist position
63% would eliminate all Assistant Principal positions
59% would eliminate 3 elementary sections
57% would eliminate Exploratory Classes in middle school
52% would eliminate Study Skills in middle school
50% would eliminate one guidance counselor position
47% would eliminate the position of Director of Technology
44% would eliminate the position of Athletic Director
44% would eliminate JV Football
32% would eliminate all in-district bus monitors
19% would merge the Dows Lane and Main Street Schools
19% would reduce kindergarten to a half day program
4% would eliminate high school electives

Again, please remember that these results are from a small sample. I continue to find the relative results much more interesting and valuable than the absolute results.

Some people have expressed concerns to me about the process of collecting votes on these potential budget cuts. Some feel that people are not sufficiently informed to make good judgments in their voting. Others feel that people will feel disappointed if the eventual budget does not reflect the results on VotaVox. One person recently complained to Dr. Matusiak because put notices on a table at the farmers market letting people know that they could vote on these topics. Dr. Matusiak contacted the farmers market to learn more about the notices, so I sent a letter directly to Dr. Matusiak today explaining my objectives and reminding her of the process (Dr. Matusiak has been included on this email list since the first email). I’ve copied my letter to Dr. Matusiak below.

I have enjoyed discussing the specific topics and the general implications of VotaVox with many of you. I will leave you with some final thoughts from my website on why I created VotaVox to begin with:

Any of us can change the world. VotaVox is a tool to enable our individual and thereby our collective empowerment. By engaging your own mind you engage the minds of others. By speaking out you are heard and understood. By participating you force others to action.

Thanks,

Eli

___________________________________________________

Dear Dr. Matusiak,

My name is Eli Halliwell and I’ve attended the last two meetings you held: one on the merging of the schools and the other on the school budget. After the budget meeting, I felt there was still a lot of confusion and uncertainty about what people felt, and I wanted to help you get further input from the community on what they feel should or shouldn’t get cut. I posted the highest dollar value potential cuts you presented at that meeting on my website, www.votavox.com, and invited people from the community to start voting. I actually sent that first email to you as well as the second with the initial results (see both below). So far, about 550 votes have been cast.

In an effort to get more input from a broader audience within the school district, I set up a table at the farmers market yesterday with a small sign saying “Vote on Irvington School Budget Cuts – Make your voice heard today by voting at www.votavox.com”. I also printed directions for how to use my website and vote on Irvington topics.

To be clear, my goal is not to advocate for any specific outcome. My goal is community engagement in a way that is quantifiable and valuable to you and the BOE. When I came back at the end of the day, I heard that you had called to inquire about the sign and had been concerned it was advocating for specific outcomes. I wanted to write to you directly to make clear my intentions and make it clear that I’m not advocating for any specific cuts. I just want to enable better engagement and involvement among Irvington residents in the process of determining what to cut (if anything).

Please also know that this is not an attempt at mob rule. The BOE is elected to be informed and make decisions on behalf of the community. My goal is to help them by giving them quantifiable feedback from the community. Already, with even a small base of votes, I find the relative responses very interesting. You can see the results as of last week listed below.

I think a tool like VotaVox can be very useful in a situation like this, where the community is in a tough spot and emotions are running high. In particular, I think a tool like this can be valuable to you. If there is a disconnect between the feedback from the community and what you feel is right, it gives you a chance to recognize that difference and address it, hopefully creating more knowledge and understanding among the community.

Toward that end, I would encourage you to embrace the process I have started on VotaVox and let people know that there is a place they can go to have their opinions quantified and collectively heard. If you feel that the topics presented on the site are not comprehensive enough and have suggestions for other topics to post, please either post them (it is a wiki tool) or just let me know and I will post them. Also, if there are any topics that you feel are biased in their wording, please let me know. The goal is to be agnostic and simply present the issues.

Thanks for hearing me out on this. I know this can’t be an easy process. I have run companies for the past decade and recognize the difficult position you are in. In my experience, embracing transparency while retaining authority is the best approach. If you would like to talk about any of this further, please feel free to call me at 212-361-9515 or respond to this email.

Sincerely,

Eli Halliwell

Still early in the Irvington budget cuts voting, with only 425 votes cast, here is a summary of the results so far (from most to least popular):

• 100% would cut administrators and/or supervisors
• 89% would eliminate the position of Elementary Assistant Principal
• 89% would eliminate the position of CSE Chair
• 86% would make public the union contract details and negotiations
• 80% would eliminate one K-5 Library Media Specialist position
• 80% would eliminate and/or consolidate bus stops
• 74% believe Irvington school taxes are unacceptably high and need to be lowered
• 72% would eliminate on school psychologist position
• 67% would eliminate all Assistant Principal positions
• 67% would eliminate the Teaching Learning Facilitator Position
• 65% would merge the superintendents and other executive staff for Irvington, Dobbs Ferry and Hastings to have one set of executive staff.
• 57% would eliminate one guidance counselor position
• 56% would eliminate Exploratory Classes in middle school
• 56% would eliminate the position of Athletic Director
• 54% would eliminate 3 elementary sections
• 50% would eliminate the position of Director of Technology
• 50% would eliminate Study Skills in middle school
• 37% would eliminate JV Football
• 35% would eliminate all in-district bus monitors
• 19% would merge the Dows Lane and Main Street Schools
• 15% would reduce kindergarten to a half day program
• 5% would eliminate high school electives

These are very preliminary results with relatively low voting on each topic, but it gives insight into areas where respondents are more and less willing to cut the budget to reduce taxes.

More updates to come as more people vote.

Eli

To help people orient themselves on the Orb, we recently launched a new feature that enables you to see where several high profile politicians would be on the VotaVox Orb, based on their public statements and records. To see avatars for Barack Obama, John McCain, Nancy Pelosi and Joe Wilson, go to the Orb, click on “Famous and Friends”, and click on the avatars you’d like to see.

Also note that you can now click on your VotaVox friends one at a time.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Eli

VotaVox 1.0 has been up for 2 weeks now, and already there are some interesting trends emerging.

Voters aren’t so binary

First I will share some observations from the Orb. While there is distinct clustering among the self-described liberals and the self-described conservatives, there is more overlap than one might guess indicating many liberals and conservatives share very similar voting records but view themselves differently. The screen shots below of the Orb show these areas of commonality.

This supports my general hypothesis that most people share more in common than they like to believe. Also note the breadth of diversity among both groups – their members are dispersed pretty broadly. This supports the fact that neither political party is as monolithic as they like to present themselves.

Interestingly, the self-described independents live up to their label, and are spread out across the Orb in all directions, as you can see from the other image below.

While 89% of conservatives share the belief that Obama should not raise the capital gains tax rate, and 95% and 88% of liberals support the concept of universal healthcare and believe the US should take a more active role in regulating the hedge fund industry respectively, there are no common values among independents on VotaVox. This makes sense and highlights the fact that independents are not necessarily people on the borderline between liberal and conservative. Rather they simply don’t see themselves fitting into the dogma of either party even if their voting record puts them squarely in one camp or the other.

Support for the war in Afghanistan is weak across all demographic groups

I was surprised to see that 56% of VotaVox voters believe the US should end the war in Afghanistan now. Then I heard that number corroborated almost exactly by several major news polls. More interesting is the diversity of people who share the belief that we should end the war now:

• 66% of liberals
• 52% of independents
• 40% of conservatives
• 67% of libertarians
• 45% of Christians
• 55% of Jews
• 64% of Atheists
• 75% of Muslims

The only groups I found with significant support for the war were people under 18 and over 65, and people who earn more than $150k annually. These groups support continuing the war at 67%, 83%, and 78% respectively.

Support for a carbon tax is broad across all demographic groups.

62% of VotaVox voters support a carbon tax. As with support for ending the war in Afghanistan, the group of voters is skewed toward liberals, but fully 40% of conservative voters also support a carbon tax, and support is strong across all demographic groups:

• 72% of liberals
• 56% of independents
• 40% of conservatives
• 48% of libertarians

Support was highest among top earners at 78% of people earning over $150k, but the majority of low wage earners supported a carbon tax as well: 58% of those earning less than $25k and 55% of those earning between $25k and $50k.

Aside from conservatives and libertarians, the only group of people where less than a majority support a carbon tax were those people with some secondary school but no degree. Only 46% of them support a carbon tax.

Significant disparity in support for universal healthcare.

Not surprisingly, an area of significantly less agreement is on universal healthcare. While 76% of VotaVox voters say they support the concept of universal healthcare, the support is much more heavily weighted toward liberals and away from conservatives. Here are the breakdowns of support for the concept of universal healthcare by demographic grouping:

• 95% of liberals
• 79% of independents
• 34% of conservatives
• 48% of libertarians

Across every other demographic slice except one, more than a majority of people support universal healthcare. The one exception is for people under 18, where only 33% support universal healthcare.

Interestingly, support for universal healthcare is stronger among self-employed and part-time workers (86% and 84% respectively) than it is among the unemployed (74%).

Support for gay marriage is strong across all demographics

71% of VotaVox voters support gay marriage, with a majority of voters agreeing across all demographic slices with the exception of conservatives, where 46% support gay marriage. Despite broad, diverse support, there are meaningful segments of every group that do not support gay marriage, even with liberals. Here is the breakdown by some major groups supporting gay marriage:

• 82% of liberals
• 67% of independents
• 46% of conservatives
• 82% of libertarians
• 58% of Christians
• 86% of Jews
• 85% of Atheists
• 58% of Muslims

Other stand out data points are that support was relatively low among Asians (53%) and people with no secondary schooling (53%), and support was relatively high among those earning over $150k (82%).

I gleaned all of the above insights just by playing with the VotaVox Orb. There remain many more discoveries to unveil, so please register, vote and play with the Orb on VotaVox.

Several people have told me they think the VotaVox Orb looks cool, but they don’t really understand how to use it. That makes sense because it turns out there is nothing really like it out there. The Orb is a very powerful analytical tool morphed into something that should be fun and visually stimulating once you get the hang of it.

How the Orb Works

To start, let me explain what it is and how it work. The algorithm that drives the Orb compares everyone’s VotaVox voting record vote by vote. It moves people who voted the same on a given topic closer, and moves those who voted differently apart. Like protons and electrons pushing and pulling on each other. The more voting records in the data set, the more complicated the calculation because each relationship between two voting records represents a dimension.

Imagine moving real people around on the floor based on the similarities and differences of their voting records and you’ll quickly see that immediately you run out of dimensions. The algorithm compresses the multiple dimensions down into two, representing as close as possible the multivariate world in one plane. Think of taking a 3 dimensional ball with dots suspended in it and then squishing it down into a circle. The Orb does that, but for 700 dimensions (or however many voters there are in the data set). This requires lots and lots of computing power and happens in the background on a constant basis. The Orb is constantly iterating and recalculating to make a better and better approximation of where your place should be relative to everyone else’s. For that reason, sometimes it takes half a minute or so for a change in the data to come through on the Orb.

So what this basically means is every time you vote, the entire Orb must recalibrate.

When you look at the Orb, however, you’re looking at the representation of all voting records at a fixed point in time. Each dot represents a specific person’s voting record, and you can see your own dot in the Orb by clicking on the Find Me button. As you start clicking on filters, the dots don’t move or change position. Some of them are simply highlighted while others fade out of view. The point of this feature is to reveal where people who hold certain attributes or values are located on the Orb.

General Orb Views
For example, if you go to the data box, click on where it says “select demographic” and click on “religion” you will see a tally of all the self-reported religions of the people who have voted on VotaVox. If you click on Christian, the Orb will change and show only those dots that represent people who self-report as Christians. You’ll notice they are pretty spread out all across the Orb, which means that there is a lot of diversity of opinion among the self-reporting Christians. They are not all voting the same way on VotaVox. Notice also that the common values box is blank. That means there is not one single Vote on VotaVox that at least 85% of all self-reporting Christians voted on the same way.

If you now click on Atheist, you’ll see much more of a clustering of dots. There are some areas of the Orb where there are almost no Atheists. You will also see a list of half a dozen or more common values — topics where at least 85% of the Atheists voted the same way.

Vote Specific Orb Views

Seeing if the Orb shows clustering or diffusion is also relevant when looking at the results of any specific Vote.  Highly clustered dots represents a lot of commonality among those who hold a specific opinion, while more diffuse dots represents a view that is more broadly held across a wide group of people.

For example, if you go to the Vote page for “I support the concept of universal healthcare”, you will see that those who agree with this statement are spread out all across the Orb.  That means that they likely disagree with lots of people on lots of other topics, but on this topic they agree with each other.  Notice that the common values box is blank.

Go to the data table and click on “work status” under “select demographic”.  You will see the results of the Vote, broken down according to whether people are employed full time, part time, self-employed, unemployed or students (I have to add a “retired” category in there).  As you’d guess, the self-employed group is the most in favor of universal healthcare coverage because they are not able to participate in employer based programs.

Now click on the word “disagree” at the top of that box.  It will show you all of the people who do not support universal healthcare.  They are much more clustered, and correspondingly the common values box shows 3 topics that at least 85% of them voted on the same way.  If you want to triangulate even further, you can click on the percentage number at the intersection of self-employed and disagree, and you can see the relatively few number of people who are self-employed but still don’t support universal healthcare.  You will also see that the common values box is now full with half a dozen other topics that this sub group voted on the same way.

I hope this was helpful.  I find the Orb amazingly insightful even with only 14,000 votes, but I can see that it would take some time to understand fully. Play with it more and over time it will make sense.

Please comment to help me understand if this was helpful.

VotaVox 1.0 is now officially live and in my humble opinion very cool. Before I get started with the update, I need to send a HUGE shout out to the development team for the major effort that went into getting us to this point. Thank you very much.

Over 13,000 Votes Cast.
The data pool is much more robust now, with over 500 votes cast on many topics. We also have much more diversity in the voter base, with 36% liberals, 18% conservatives, 30% independents and 16% describing their political affiliation as something else. Some of the results are very surprising. Here are some highlights on the votes cast to date:

• 57% believe we should end the war in Afghanistan now.
• 52% believe it should be legal to teach creationism in public schools.
• 61% believe the US should impose a carbon tax on all fossil fuels and their byproducts.
• 49% believe the morning after pill should not be available to minors without parental consent.
• 75% support the concept of universal healthcare.
• 47% believe resident illegal immigrants should be granted amnesty and permanent residency status.
• 69% believe gay marriage should be legal.
• 37% believe Iran’s nuclear facilities should be preemptively attacked and destroyed.

You can see the demographic breakout of all the votes, including religion, age, family/marital status, household income, education level, political affiliation, gender, work status and ethnicity on the VotaVox Orb. Some of the categories are missing some data, but that will be restored soon.

Find out where you are on the VotaVox Orb!
The most significant new element to the website is the launch of the VotaVox Orb. The Orb is a data visualization tool that shows the commonality and diffusion of people’s VotaVox voting records. If people vote the same on a given topic, the Orb moves them closer together; if they vote differently, it moves them apart.

The VotaVox Orb is now live, and you can see where you are compared to all the other voters. To see yourself, just click the show me button on the Orb page. If your location is very close to the center of the Orb, you either haven’t voted on many topics or you share tons of votes in common with lots of other people who haven’t voted on many topics. (Everyone starts off in the center of the Orb and moves from there.) To see how people near you voted, draw a circle around yourself and the common values box will display all the Votes that most people within that circle (at least 85%) voted on the same way as you did. Then you can use the data box to see the distribution of people’s demographics in your area of the Orb. You can see the breakout of people by all of the demographic attributes people added to the optional data section of their profile. Please note that you can only see data that you yourself have entered, so if you’re curious to see how the results of a particular vote differ by political affiliation, you have to enter yours to see it. The data interface is pay-to-play.

You will also see a button that says show my friends. This button lets you see where other people are on the Orb. Of course people need to give their approval before you can see their Orb location. Most of the functionality is done, except for the bit about asking for people’s approval. If anyone is dying to see a friend’s spot, as an interim solution just email me jointly saying you’re both willing to share your positions with each other and I’ll set it up manually. Should be automated soon.

Finally, in the next day or so you will also see a button that says show famous people. Right now, the only famous people you’ll see are avatars for some high profile politicians. They didn’t actually vote on VotaVox, but I looked at their public record and put their votes in for them. They are welcome to claim their profiles at any time. In the meanwhile, this will instantly give you a sense for the general zones of the Orb. Since there are no axes, it may be hard for some people to figure out what their location means. Knowing the values of these famous politicians is a good way to quickly benchmark your location. Over time, I’m hoping to get some non-elected famous people to share their VotaVox Orb locations as well. I’ll let you know as that happens.

Local voting function
Another major new feature to VotaVox that took a lot of work is the localize function. This let’s people set a geographic attribute to any specific vote, so that people who live locally can find it easily by clicking “local” on the search page. An example would be a local city or state election. These are not super valuable to people elsewhere, but very useful to people nearby. It helps enable VotaVox as a local tool.

Please spread the word…
Now that we’re fully launched, please take some time to explore the site. If you have any comments/thoughts, I’d really love to hear them. I’m also very eager to get the word out as broadly as possible. Please forward any specific topics or the site in general to anyone and everyone you think would be interested in participating. Facebook, email, twitter – go crazy. The more people who vote, the more valuable and interesting and powerful the data becomes. I’ve been floored by the response to the site so far. I’m very eager to get it out there and see people’s response.

At the very least, don’t you want to see where your friends and family are on the Orb? Convince them to register and vote, and then you can…

Thanks for all your support to date, and thanks for helping me bring VotaVox to the world.

With about 180 test users and just under 4,000 votes cast, we’re off to a great start with VotaVox. A lot of the functionality still isn’t working, but much more has come online since most of you last visited the site.

The biggest change is that you can now see the results on each Vote!!!

To see results on a particular Vote, just search for it and click through to the detailed Vote page. If you’ve already voted on that topic, you will see the results right there. If you haven’t, you will have to vote first before you see the results.

Votes are now presented as statements, not questions.

I’ve also changed the format for almost all the Votes. Most are now presented as statements and your voting options are to “agree” or “disagree”. It turns out this presentation method implies much less bias (even if none was originally intended) and also gives the opportunity to present negative as well as affirmative positions (eg. Abortion should not be legal. Agree or disagree?). It would be great to hear from the testers how this major change in content/context feels.

Results to date show the testing group is on average socially liberal and fiscally conservative, with more support for addressing climate change than health reform.

It has been a blast looking through the initial results. Some interesting things to note from the summary results:

• Gay marriage has just as much support as legalized abortion – in both cases these are areas of huge agreement across the entire group.
• Most people don’t want a redistributive tax, don’t want the cap gains tax to increase, and think Congress should cut the budget not offer any more stimulus spending; however, there is overwhelming support for a straight carbon tax – more even than support for a cap and trade system.
• As liberal as this group is, there is very limited/mixed support for health care reform. While the majority of people like the concept of universal healthcare, people are very divided about being willing to be taxed to pay for it, and of the few people who have answered the specific health reform Votes there isn’t much will to actually participate in the proposed programs.
• Most people are in favor of granting amnesty to documented resident illegal aliens, and also think the US should let more immigrants into the country. The surprising stat is that half of respondents believe speaking English should be a mandatory requirement for US citizenship.
• There is much more support for minors having access to birth control than for having access to the morning after pill.
• And there are some hawks in the group: in the case of both Iran and North Korea, half of people who voted on the topics support a pre-emptive strike on nuclear facilities.
• Neither Sarah Palin nor Bill Clinton get much love from this group.

There are lots of sports and business results too, but neither category received as heavy voting.

Tons of new videos have been posted.
For those of you who haven’t made up your mind on certain issues and want to learn more, there are a bunch of videos live on the site that can help inform you. They usually represent all sides of an issue and are often from people like President Obama, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul. There is some Rush Limbaugh in there too, which is also interesting. Check them out and feel free to add more.

More new Votes uploaded now too – including approval ratings for all decision makers.

Thank you to those of you who have posted new topics. Some have received many votes already. The propose function has been upgraded significantly and now you can post multi-choice Votes as well as Agree/Disagree. The tag editor is now working too. Some of you will notice I’ve edited the language of your Votes. Please let me know if you think I’ve altered the spirit of what you intended!

The VotaVox Orb is almost ready.
I can’t tell you how pleased and excited I am about the VotaVox Orb. For a data geek like me, it is a very cool thing. It shows visually the commonality and dispersion of all the VotaVox voters, and enables a deep dive into demographic slices.

Aside from the final development work, the main issue with the Orb is not enough of you have put in your demographic data. Please click on the My Data tab at the top of this page and input your demographics. Just over 1/3 of you have added your demographic data. Of this group:

• 55% are self-described liberals
• 30% are self-described independents
• 10% are self-described conservatives
• 5% are self-described libertarians or environmentalists

More functionality coming soon.

Please come back and check in regularly. We’re going to be adding a lot more fun functionality over the next two weeks. All US elected officials at the federal and state level will be uploaded and tied to each of your zip codes. This will help me target each of your specific elected officials with the results of your voting. I have found databases for Canada, UK, Australia and Germany too. They will come later. There will also be significant improvements to the navigation of the site, and on the media reader you will be able to vote on the usefulness of each specific video. And, of course, the VotaVox Orb is coming soon too.

Feedback.
Please feel free to post any feedback here in the comments section of this blog. If you don’t feel comfortable posting them publicly, you can always just email me. Your comments so far have been very helpful. Please keep them coming. After these next few weeks, I’ll be opening the site to the world – in phases, of course. Your input can help ensure VotaVox gets the momentum it needs to be successful.

VotaVox was born out of my belief that we share a common fate and we all need to have more input into the world around us.

Participation.  Engagement.  Direction.  Feedback.

Our ability to have an impact has expanded massively as technology has literally connected us across the planet.  VotaVox is simply a tool designed to take input, quantify it, qualify it and deliver it to people in power.

Presidents.  Mayors.  CEOs.  Prime Ministers.  Senators.  Commissioners.  Kings.  General Secretaries.  University Presidents.  Congress People.  Team Owners.  Supreme Leaders.  MPs.  Coaches.  Dictators.  Heroes.

All the people who pull the strings that impact our lives.  They need to hear from us and they need our input to be informed, independent, broad and balanced.

VotaVox let’s you speak to these people in a way that is meaningful to them: in numbers.  By channeling unique voices into votes on issues, those voices are amplified exponentially, and they become impossible to ignore.

This is powerful, but with power comes responsibility.  It turns out there is no “they” anymore.  There is only “we”.  We are in control.  We are all empowered individually and collectively to influence our world.  This is a great responsibility and we are accountable to ourselves, to each other and to future generations.

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that you’ve decided to help me out by participating in the pre-launch of Votavox.  Please take some time to browse the issues posted, vote on those that are important to you, and propose any new Votes that you think people would find important or fun.  They can range from the most challenging global issues to fun and local topics.  What is important to me is that they are forward looking, actionable and targeted at a decision maker.

Have fun on my new site.  If you have any feedback – good, bad or indifferent – please let me know.  Post comments on this blog or you can reach me at eli@votavox.com.