Here is an interview which Pete Austin, developer and editor of CastingVote.com, gave on 14th February 2000. Feel free to quote it, in context, or send additional questions to editor@castingvote.com.

Q. Hello Pete, tell us about yourself.

A. I'm a programmer in my early 40s. I started and ran the games company Level 9 Computing for ten years, with my brother Mike. Then I worked in the finance industry, on trading room systems, before starting CastingVote.

Q. Why a voting site, rather than e-commerce like everyone else?

A. Three reasons.

1. First, I felt that nobody was doing voting properly on the Web, and this was an area where a small start-up could run a free site and make a difference.
2. I think people like opinion polls, and topical quizzes. I know I do. But normally you get them packaged along with a lot of other stuff. Why not cherry pick and put the good features together in one place?
3. I want to help ordinary people set the political agenda. If anyone writes a poll, then CastingVote will run it for free (assuming it's interesting and won't get us in too much trouble). And then we will publicise the results.

Q. You said, "nobody was doing voting properly".

A. Yes. Many sites just display quizzes and ask you to score with paper and pencil! Others rely on JavaScript, which I turn off to block those stupid pop-up advertising windows, or Java, which I disabled after it crashed my PC for the tenth time, or add-ins where you have to trust the provider. IMHO, unless a site provides real-time data, like arcade games or stock prices, it should be able to work with just plain old HTML.

Voting also works really well by email, so it's surprising that others don't do it. Email has always been a "must have" for CastingVote.

Finally, to make it easy to write better polls, quizzes and games, we put a lot of effort into the CastingVote author system. In the long run, content is king.

Q. Why CastingVote.com?

A. We got together a bunch of good vote-related names that had not already been registered and Gina, Mike's wife, picked the best one.

Q. What was the biggest challenge?

A. Trying to get search engines to register the site properly. I'm glad to say that Mike has been fighting those battles!

Q. Are you happy with the look of the site?

A. Reasonably so. We "cut a few corners", so as to start running votes in January, but have since engaged a professional web designer to make changes. See what you think by the end of March.

Q. Do you operate the site?

A. It takes a specialist company, such as http://www.intermedia.net, to provide reliable 24x7 operation. CastingVote runs some really sophisticated business objects, on their server, but I am hoping to be able to manage the site entirely by email, from a little organizer.

Q. Will a free voting site ever make any money?

A. CastingVote.com will remain a free voting site, but we will sell advertising space and voting technology. We have plans to develop into related areas.

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