Today’s must-read article comes from The Financial Times, which describes how civil society activists in Ghana are “pioneering a system that aims to harness the power of Africa’s mobile phones to prevent politicians from stealing elections.” The innovative use of cell phones and SMS text messaging (or should that be txt msg?) to monitor elections and establish activist networks was the subject of a recent discussion organized by the Center for International Media Assistance.
The FT cites the work of the Coalition of Domestic Election Observers, (CODEO), a coalition of over 30 civil society groups, in using cell phones to monitor the polls and considers its provenance and wider relevance:
Developers of the scheme, set up with expertise from the National Democratic Institute in the US and funding from USAid, admit it is no panacea. A less sophisticated parallel count in Zimbabwe failed to stop outbreaks of violence and it is unclear whether a successful independent tally would have averted Kenya’s crisis. Nevertheless, the sheer speed and reduced margin for error of the SMS-based system is light years ahead of techniques available in the past.
As the World Movement for Democracy recently reported, CODEO released two reports ahead of the elections. “CODEO Report on the Pre-Election Scenario for June 2008,” expressed concern at the Electoral Commission’s delay in registering voters, and apparent abuses by incumbents, while the “CODEO Report on the Pre-Election Environment for May 2008, “concluded that party primaries to select parliamentary nominees were mostly “smooth and peaceful” although there were reported instances of vote buying and threats of violence.
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