I like it! Just remove the extra buttons and let people just click the picture.

Maybe even have a different page where people just vote between two candidates and just link to the main page that has more info.

Thanks for your suggestions everyone. I've taken out the buttons and added short instructions ("Click a picture to vote!").

Is the Social News link noticeable? I'm wondering if the social news page should be the home page, because that's probably more useful and would get more traffic.

What if I want to vote for someone who isn't displayed on the front page? Do I just have to wait for a new smackdown to come up?

Yeah, right now you do. Mainly to prevent people from voting the same way over and over. Then again, who cares if that happens?

Are the match ups randomized? Simply reloading the page should give you a fresh pairing to vote on.

I haven't shown this to many people, so I'd really appreciate any comments or suggestions!

All good and great but find a better pic of Giuliani. I quit after i saw that...

What's not to like about a picture of Giuliani, in drag, mincing for the camera? :)

I've replaced that with a very manly image: http://www.redbluesmackdown.com/parties/2/candidates/11

Clicking on the logo/banner (on top) should bring users back to the home page.

Otherwise - neat!

Thanks! That is fixed now.

don't make me find and click a button.. just let me click the picture to vote.

Guess that would be adding likebetter to the equation.

Thanks- I've added the ability to click on the picture to vote. Is it useful at all to have the buttons there as well?

No, it makes me think that I need to click the button to make my vote count. I'd replace it with some explanatory text that says to "click the picture of the candidate you think kicks more ass". Folks will naturally figure out what to do.

Explanatory text is probably bad for something this simple.

I'd set it up like this: If you click the button you vote, if you click the picture you go to the candidate description. But - if you go to the candidate description page you should still be able to vote for that candidate against any other candidate.

You have to think about the most common usage pattern-- folks will most likely want to click through a whole bunch of pairings very quickly to register as much opinion as possible until they get bored (think about how people use hotornot or kittenwar).

You have to make the voting area easy to click (nice and big) and in the same position every time. The photo is the most logical choice.

I agree about the explanatory text, but my reflexes are conditioned to stop and read a submit button before I click it, and parsing the text on the buttons (which changes every time with the candidate's name) adds time to the transaction. You could solve this by making the text consistent from page to page, if you're wedded to the buttons.

it's crazy that for something this simple there are so many different ideas on how it should be done. I like having buttons there because most people think buttons allow you to do something, but the convention (using that term loosely) is to just show images, and let people click on one of those. But I actually have had people not know what to do if there were just images and no explanatory text.

"it's crazy that for something this simple there are so many different ideas on how it should be done."

Reminds me of the bike shed story (http://bikeshed.com/) ;)

even kittenwar has a little 5-word explanation: "Click the cutest kitten picture!"

Keep it short and sweet.

How about a skip button?

good idea - I will add that tomorrow

thanks. Someone really needs to take politics off of reddit's hands...

heh, no problem :)

mindless, neat, cool. thumbs up!

or better yet, create a politics channel on likebetter.com? :-)