Line politicians up side-by-side on every issue with Voxe.org

With the Second round of voting just around the corner, the more the forty percent of French voters who voted for neither Hollande nor Sarkozy in the first round of voting may be wondering which candidate best lines up with their views. Voxe, a politics platform, thinks it has the solution, by offering users the ability to line politician’s up side-by-side and examine their views on important issues, such as EU relations, immigration, environmental issues and more.
While I will not be voting in a French election anytime soon, I took the opportunity to line up Hollande and Sarkozy on some of the issues that entrepreneurs might be most interested in – immigration (for international entrepreneurs), taxes on companies, and public research. Voxe showed me that Hollande wants to restrict student VISAs, which may be harmful to startups who often look to hiring interns as the cheapest form of labor. Holland has been infamous for his 75% tax on incomes above $1Million; however, it looks like Sarkozy, as well, is falling back on raising taxes to companies and the wealthy. It is interesting to line up their views side-by-side on similar issues, with quotations contributed by users, to see where politicians really differentiate themselves.
Voxe has been pretty active in the tech community since its creation. This past march, it held the first-ever Hack The Elections hackathon, where ten projects were created over a two days, making use of the Voxe platform as well as other open data platforms, of which there are many in France.
As the final election day gets closer, more and more politically-oriented websites and applications seem to be popping up. Factwatcher, a platform for factchecking the soundbytes of politicians, will be fact-checking the entire debate between Sarkozy and Hollande this Wednesday, allowing users to break down the politican-speak and see which politican stuck to the hard truth.