Election Hackathon Notes

Who worked on this project: Heather, Sally, Simon, Nick, Lisa, Kevin
WIki link - http://wiki.ushahidi.com/display/WIKI/Free+Elections+Hackathon
Website - http://www.electionshack.co.uk/

To do
post all the content to dan by next week
ask team to review the spreadsheet

Next Steps
1. complete the election list
2. engage a researcher
3. toolbox research and building

Two parts of the Election Hackathon

1. Election Toolkit analysis
2. Election map comparison by categories

1. Election Toolkit analysis

This is a draft analysis of what might need to be in a toolkit as defined by the election team - one journalist, three election monitor (NGO), and an Ushahidian. This content will be used to inform the greater field of using Ushahidi for elections. We want to build resources for best practices. Some of the next steps include doing an analysis of all the blog post about elections and Ushahidi. This would be a great university student project.
(Note: these are draft notes brainsourced by the participants. To be edited)

Organizations: NGOs, Intra-governmental
NDI
IDEA - how to run an election on website
IRI
IFIS
ERIS
UNDP
OCE - Euro Security election 
Commonwealth org
IFES

Declaration of Principles for election monitoring - ERIS cowrote it
*security standards 
*election monitoring standards
*BRIDGE - online teaching mechanism for election processes
*election management bodies - EMBs 
*global processes
*EMB is responsible for the conduct for election processes
*essentially state and language
*state under francho model - control identity 
*anglo model does not have id registry
*the state and registration are intertwined under franco model
*conflict - id card and id under conflict model could lead to death
*indept of election monitoring body

The big three:
IDEA - how to run one
BRIDGE is intragovermental model of best practices
ACE - cost elections, voter ed, how unit cost, online encloypedia, global experts where anyone can ask a question

3 check and balances:
polit parties
EMB
Civil society
EMB - set process so that every entitled person is registered and to vote

*greater access tools to affect change
*election only test
for whose benefit is the election monitoring
Each country will have a code of conduct for election monitoring
selection criteria
*election process and doubts about process can cause fissures in society
*can be a conflict resolution tool but can produce winners and losers
*some focus on election day, need to focus on registration
confidence in the system? 
tech needs to be confident and those who are controlling process are sure that rights are met
External valuation of processes - on verification processes - SIMON 
quality control, quality assurance
ONE has to agree to be an outside provider to verify it

*UNDP or NDI -
might run into issues if UNDP not others
*should not be the service provider or map paycheck 
The election process cycle can be months, years. by understanding this you can most effectively to shine light on it. Registration is core
Map campaign finance - how much has been really spent, count election posters to highlight. what if the occupy model of photos was used to track election poster spending.
by country campaigning done, do you poster or buy off village chief
freely fairly vote and have access to info
no impediments

components election

1. entry point of the election cycle defines what you will be able to move/change: The election process cycle can be months, years. by understanding this you can most effectively to shine light on it. 
2. what existing resources from the global organizations (nonsuch)
needs based, needs driven
there are international community agendas
regimes
3. what are the goals of the project
4. existing ushahidi resources - types
5. there is no universal observation form
map comparison and how used by country
some continents play different, than francophone africa
what is the value add?
if you include electoral conflict / tension monitoring in the toolkit, it could be considered a branch of election observation, but it has slightly different goals and usually a longer timeframe.

2. Global use of Ushahidi for election monitoring. Comparing the categories

what are your observations:

Simon
DRC Map overview:
*Contextual analysis- why is a category import ?
*Why is the humanitarian category on drc map
*Factual info vs inference are not separated
*Judgement
*The categories don't have a logical flow
*Elections are linear - how does it fit into the cycle
*Procedure issues vs materials deficiency 
*Recommends- give template of standard category by Country
*Some of the Categories need time related ; there is a chronological orders for elections. Like posters pre-elections
*Categories exist without definitions 
*Can get uniform overlay
Uchaguzi map overview:

*Security and actors need to be separated
*There is a judgement by stating police as a category
*Recommends:
**Common framework. Incident reports provide specific
**One world -framework , put deviant data as an incident report as a separate layer
*Needs to none some sifting
*Needs to figure out how time is mixed in

Sally

• Some maps chart incidents specific to the election process (MiradorElectoral Guatemala) while others (Belun Timor-Leste) provide a more general overview of  population behaviours in the run-up and during the electoral period. 
• Contamos (Mexico) focused on actions by presidential candidates rather than monitoring the electoral processes themselves.
• Jom Pantau is the only map to list 'postal votes' as a category - Simon mentioned the importance/expense of including the diaspora vote..
• Would be good to see how the field of using ushahidi progressed over time. did it inform the field? Did people get influenced by other election monitoring maps? Were lessons learned enacted?

NICK
BANTU WATCH
*Ballot Issues - No mention of security of Ballot boxes i.e. over night storage
*Voter Issues - no use for Misc category, 
*Voter Issues - Support for illiterate voters can be broadened for support for voters i.e. disabilities, elderly, blind etc - the electoral law will specify what is the practice for this category

DRC
*Relationship between - hunger and humanitarian support ; and elections is somewhat beyond the purview of election monitoring. 
*Voter Tampering - should generalise to manipulation - not just of illiterate voters

GHANA VOTES
*Without sub-categories, a number of the categories are incredibly vague i.e. civic education activities
*No specificity with categories of violence or death i.e. who, when, why, how, surrounding circumstances

UCHAGUZI
*Polling Station Logistics - Polling station closures can be facilitated by more than violence alone i.e. intimidation, manipulation of election law, of position etc
*Similar problems as the BANTU Watch categories i.e. misc and focus on illiteracy alone

MIRADORE ELECTIONS
*Too broad and too focused on broad violations - not focused on processes and electoral system

JOM PANTAU
*Too broad - again little focus on electoral processes and systems
*Guatemala map needed more substance, might be good to drill in

Lisa
general comments -
*many of the category lists do not start from a clear organization point - i.e. parent categories are not all of the same level or type. that is, the list in bantu watch, for example, has positives, hate speech, voting and results.. these are very different kinds of labels. i have often wished there were more than just 2 category levels. so you could start from, violent acts, peaceful acts, election irregularities and then add subcategories to separate whatever else under that). 
i also wonder if the way IFES separates out victim and perpetrator types (see Senegal and Nigeria) is useful to map in other places, or if it seems overly detail-oriented. Would be interested in other's thoughts on that. For us, part of the goal in sharing information is to note what type of actor (political, government, etc.) is committing or suffering violence.  for election observation in general, there are many types of occurences that aren't 'violent' per se and would not have victims or perpetrators.

We just added things like 'nonviolent election day issues' which was intended to contrast with the more serious incidents, but should have had subcategories

Mapping out the categories in advance probably doesn't always happen and that's why the categories sort of pile up (noting Grace's comments below) - projects don't have to have specfiic forms, but just creating a category hierarchy for every project in advance would help. so it woudl be something to provide guidelines for.

Grace
*Indicators not always thought out
violence and police violence - incidents actors and timing of the events, gravity of the incidents
time , location, incident types, gravity (number of deaths, gender), victims
has checklists from observers in Sudan - she will share
clarify the map purpose - violence monitoring and elect