A guide to election information online

Election time should, in theory, be the perfect opportunity for us to witness the gleaming wheels of democracy in motion, as we go to the polls and vote for the men and women whom we believe should represent us at local and national level.

These days it is easier and quicker than ever before to make sure you are well informed on political matters before placing your cross on the ballot paper. Thanks to the internet you can cut right through all the spin and the political posturing and get yourself straight to the heart of the issues that count.

The web is full of useful sites offering comment and opinion as well as impartial information on the policies behind the personalities. With all these online resources at your fingertips it's much easier to form your own decisions about how you are going to vote on the big day.

You can also share your thoughts online in healthy debate and, in some cases, even use the web to apply a bit of political pressure where necessary. So, before the impending general and local elections, get yourself online and investigate the issues for yourself.

Parliament exposed
Kick off by visiting the United Kingdom Parliament website. Here you'll find a great number of useful documents, many downloadable as PDF brochures, about the history and workings of our government.

You'll also find impartial fact sheets on previous elections, including the 1997 and 2001 General Elections, as well as details on recent local, European and by-elections here. In addition, the site's directory of MPs and FAQs are all extremely useful in helping to establish the essentials before you head any further.

For a more visual look at what happens in Parliament on a day-to-day basis, Parliament Live provides webcam coverage of selected meetings, while the Newsroom section of DirectGov features broadcasts, webcasts and archived video of Prime Minister's Questions.

The powers that be
Comparing the policies of political parties is as simple as heading to the homepage of each and browsing the relevant sections for details. The Tory website features sections offering information on areas of policy such as Jobs & Taxes, Crime, Schools, Hospitals, Immigration, Local Issues, Europe & the World.

A further prominent box of links quickly establishes 'What We Will Do' should the party win an election, with a direct link to a page containing all of the main Conservative policies as downloadable PDF manifestos. You'll also find transcripts of recent speeches by party leader Michael Howard and a selection of multimedia files, including streamable video reports.

The Labour Party homepage is a pretty straightforward affair. Currently, much of it is devoted to Gordon Brown's recent Budget but a clickable map of the UK lets you sample a selection of improvements that the Labour government claims to have made during its time in power.

Now that the General Election has been called, all parties will provide a copy of their official manifesto online. A good online representation of Tony Blair and the office of Prime Minister itself can be found at the 10 Downing Street website, which features a detailed biography of Mr Blair, along with the latest news from Westminster, a history of the former residents of number 10 and yet more video.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats site offers info about Charles Kennedy and members of his Lib Dem shadow cabinet, as well as biographies of all the party's MPs, MEPs and Lords. There are also links to sections for Industry, Education, Health, Justice & Crime, Economy and Transport.

Closer to home
Naturally, it isn't just the big three parties that are represented online. Every other party represented in the House of Commons, Welsh Assembly, Scottish Parliament, Greater London Assembly or European Parliament has its own respective homepage. For a full list of parties' web links, visit the Centre for Digital Library Research Directory.

Of course, when we go to the polls to vote in a General Election, we're actually voting for our local MPs, so it's a good idea to remind yourself of your current MP and his or her achievements since their election.

You can usually read up on such matters and make contact with your MP via the relevant local council website, an A-Z list of which can be found at DirectGov's QuickFind page. Alternatively, you can use the postcode search at TheyWorkForYou to track down your local MP and find out some interesting facts about them.

Voting and attendance records are particularly telling but TheyWorkForYou goes as far as providing you with information about your MP's expenses and even an estimate as to how rebellious they can be against their own party. Furnished with the finer details about how effectively your MP represents you in the House of Commons, you should be able to decide whether or not they are worthy of your vote this year.

Also on a local level, it's possible to find out how well your council is measuring up by looking up its vital statistics at the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's Best Value Performance Indicators website. Click on the Key Facts tab at the top of the page and select your part of the country from the maps that appear.

Once you've honed in on your council, you can view various performance figures by choosing from subjects such as Community Health, Education, Environment and Transport. Actual results in each area of performance can be compared to targets or national and regional averages to ascertain whether your current local government is pulling its weight or not.

And if you feel particularly inspired on a local issue, why not contact your MP, Councillors, Assembly members or European representatives directly through WriteToThem?

Media matters
Unbiased political comment and media coverage is hard to come by. Everybody has an opinion, of course, including journalists. Nevertheless, news and comment are often instrumental in how we form our opinions, and the media can still be a great source of raw info on political matters.

At either end of the spectrum you can browse through the political pages of The Guardian or the Opinion section of The Daily Telegraph.

The Guardian's ultra-modern approach is reflected by useful online features such as data from recent political polls and a news blog as well as the more traditional opinion replicated from within the broadsheet's pages.

The Daily Telegraph, on the other hand, provides a much more straightforward source of comment, with opinion pieces and letters from both the weekday and Sunday editions of the paper.

With the impartial nature of its charter, the BBC is a good source of objective information on political matters, although it's worth pointing out that even the Beeb has been accused of bias. Head over to bbc.co.uk/politics and find out for yourself. Here you can also share your own views on dozens of important issues through the site's Have Your Say online debates.

Have your say
If you're prepared to put in a bit of time for research purposes, the web can be the ultimate tool for arming yourself with political information. And, while we still can't vote online, there are plenty of opportunities to find out the facts and even take part in political dialogue by discussing your thoughts at an online forum.

Yahoo's Government and Politics groups, for instance, are teeming with activity, while Google's Talk groups encourage lively discourse.

There are countless blogs providing further food for thought. Voxpolitics is one and your local MP may have their own blog; famous political bloggers include the Tories' Boris Johnson, Labour's Shaun Woodward and the Lib Dems' Richard Allan.

And once you've made up your mind as to which way you'll vote, you can find out precisely what elections are happening in your area and how to vote in them at the Electoral Commission's AboutMyVote website.

What about electronic voting?
Countries such as Holland, Belgium and Brazil have all carried out large-scale elections involving electronic voting systems, usually involving a type of computerised kiosk at polling stations that logs votes at the push of a button and sends them to be counted centrally at the end of the day.

In the UK, however, we appear to be lagging behind in the race to modernise our electoral procedures. Although the government set up a working party to explore new ways of voting way back in 1997, so far only a few trials have been carried out and it certainly doesn't look as if we'll be seeing e-voting on our desktops anytime soon.

Pilot schemes have yet to reveal any conclusive evidence as to its vulnerability or otherwise, but the perceived failure of last year's experimental postal ballots could put back e-voting even further.

Full reports on public opinion towards e-voting, as well as the technical and legal aspects of implementing such a system, can be found in PDF format at the Electoral Commission website.