...
See some examples of Election Monitoring
TIps | Challenges |
---|---|
Early Deployment: Deploy the platform early so that you and the population can get comfortable with it. | Mapping Accuracy: Difficulty in obtaining accurate geo-data. |
Communications & Messaging: Have a well planned communications and messaging campaign in order to raise awareness. | Data Poisoning: purposeful sending of false or misleading information. |
Multi-Source Reporting: Mix election monitoring sources with the greater population's reports. | Verification: How do you deal with it in near real-time? It’s critical to have the necessary staff for data management and verification. |
Community Partnerships: Try to create partnerships between other organizations so that you can cast a wide net for both awareness and messaging of what the results really mean. | Closing The Feedback Loop: It's important to not only receive information but also share information. For example: Make sure you set up and configure SMS or email alerts. |
Multifaceted Promotional Strategy: A promotional strategy that includes offline, online and mobile. Don’t lose sight of the offline part of your plan! |
Getting Started
If you are interested in using Ushahidi for election monitoring, perhaps the most important step you can take is to plan early because disseminating information on your initiative across an entire country will take time. Ideally, start at least 6 months out and start using the platform for something other than election monitoring, such as traffic, crime or corruption monitoring. The key is to have users familiar with the platform so they can see the added value well before the elections take place. This will help you expand buy-in in the lead up to the elections. The next decision you’ll need to make is whether you want your project to be open so that anyone can report on election irregularities or whether you will mobilize trusted networks of monitors to do the reporting. You can certainly do both, which we recommend if time and resources allow. The advantage of doing both is that this increases the possibility of triangulating and validating incoming reports. Before turning to sourcing and handling incoming data, you’ll need to select the categories you want to use for the monitoring. Here are some examples: fraud, vote tampering, illegal campaigning, removal of observers.
...