Daughter's questions prompt AI aficionado to develop online tool to help voters choose - Jersey Evening Post

by · Jersey Evening Post

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Daughter’s questions prompt AI aficionado to develop online tool to help voters choose

by Julien Morel 5 June 20263 June 2026

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IF you are unsure about which candidate to vote on Sunday, a locally-made election artificial intelligence quiz could be your guide.

Inspired by his 17-year-old daughter asking for guidance on who to vote for at her first opportunity, AI aficionado Gus Fraser has built a website – jerseyvotes.org – which reviews the manifestos of candidates and then proposes the best matches based on a quiz taken by the would-be voter.

Mr Fraser said: “I thought I could help in a small way to increase engagement and people’s understanding of what goes on behind the scenes, and help my daughter be a little bit more engaged using a tool that she could then share with her friends.”

Mr Fraser said that the feedback to his quiz had been overwhelmingly positive.

“I have had all sorts of feedback because I emailed all 92 candidates to be as transparent as possible, and I have corrected, adjusted and amended following their input.

“I think it is about as accurate as you can get, but it necessarily has to have specific topics because every candidate says that they want create jobs or provide more homes. I looked back to identify which recent topics were being discussed and how they related to each other.”

He added: “Even those candidates who would have liked to be have been better reflected in the quiz – in the sense that they did not think they fell within some of the topics I have included – have respected its transparency and think it is a fantastic platform.

“Out of the 92 candidates, I would say less than 10% were not very happy and I’ve had four legal threats. But I have strived to be as unbiased as possible – so I’m only using manifesto information because voting records apply solely to incumbents or returners.

“Information also has to be machine readable for the likes of ChatGPT or Claude to search it; some people have told me they have only done leaflet-drops, but I’m afraid this is digitally based so that means you are out of the equations here.

“Importantly, I am not using any material that people cannot find elsewhere, and if they cannot find it on the internet, they can find it in the source code that I have published.”

Mr Fraser said he had begun the project a few months ago and has spent about 40 hours on it. It had begun before the manifestos were published with an analysis of voting trends in the Assembly.

This shows, for example, that the Assembly – in terms of how it votes – has become far more homogenous and less polarised over time, with close votes becoming less frequent.

Mr Fraser suggested this could be because of greater coordination and consultation before a proposition reaches the floor of the Chamber or perhaps because of more politicians voting along ministerial or party lines.

Another reason Mr Fraser was motivated to set up jerseyvotes.org, he said, was a fear that Jersey was “sleepwalking” into a future in which – with an “abnormally high” dependence on income tax and a global economy increasingly leveraging AI – the Island was facing reduced revenues coming from a small minority contributing a disproportionate amount of tax.

He said: “I was not sure if others shared that fear and I was not prepared to read 92 manifestos to find out, so I thought I’d have a look and see what analysis I could do. That’s helped me to understand a bit more about the candidates, and I hope I can potentially help my daughter and others too.”

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