DigiActive.org

Action Alert: Citizen-Powered Election Monitoring With Vote Report India

What: Vote Report India is a collaborative citizen-driven election monitoring platform for the 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections. Users contribute direct SMS, email, Twitter and web reports on violations of the Election Commission’s Model Code of Conduct. The platform aggregates these direct reports with news reports, blog posts, photos, videos and tweets related to the elections from all relevant sources, in one place, on an interactive map.

Vote Report India aims to not only increase transparency and accountability in the Indian election process, but also provide the most complete picture of public opinion in India during the month long elections.

Vote Report India is built on the Ushahidi and Swift platforms and managed by eMoksha, a non-profit organization that aims to enable stronger democracies through increased citizen awareness and engagement.

When: The month-long Indian Lok Sabha elections will be held in five phases on April 16, April 22/ 23, April 30, May 7 and May 13, and the results will be announced on May 16.

Why: This is an important election for India, in the context of a series of terrorist attacks last year that shook up the country, and a worldwide financial crisis that threatens to derail its strong economic growth.

However, as India’s 714 million voters elect their 543 representatives, we are sure to see the usual controversies that surround general elections in India: the illegal use of government resources for campaigning, incidences of divisive and inflammatory rhetoric in campaign speeches, and allegations of violence, intimidation and other irregularities during the elections.

Vote Report India will provide a platform to report and track these irregularities, and help to increase transparency and accountability in the Indian election process.

How: You can help Vote Report India in three ways.

Step 1: Evangelize It

We would encourage you to spend some time at our website and project wiki to get a sense of what we are doing. If you like what we are doing, please join the Vote Report India community at Twitter (@votereportindia), Facebook, Orkut, SMSGupShup or Google Groups and subscribe to our blog. If you have a blog or a website, please consider writing about Vote Report India and displaying our banners (200X200 and 150X150) on your blog or website.

Step 2: Use It

The next step is to actually use the Vote Report India platform and encourage others to use it.

Incidents can be reported in four ways –

- By sending a message starting with VoteReport to 5676785
- By sending an email to report@votereport.in
- By filling a form on the Vote Report India website.
- By sending a tweet with the hashtag #votereport

Step 3: Volunteer

We can use all the help we can get. Volunteer opportunities are available in many areas, especially for software developers, designers and journalists. Please email us at votereportindia@gmail.com to explore these opportunities.

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics, my blog on social media and social change.

Tactic: Zimbabwe Election Watch Map

Description: This mashup overlays a Google map of Zimbabwe with information about breaches in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections* since July 2007.

Map URL: http://www.sokwanele.com/map/all_breaches

Organizer: Zimbabwe Election Watch, a project of the Zimbabwean movement blog www.Sokwanele.com

Purpose of Action: To make an accessible visual representation of complex longitudinal data about breaches in electoral standards.

Organizing Tools: Google maps, a blog

Outcome: Results of the March 29, 2008 election will be announced on Monday, March 31..

Ease of Replication: Creating a basic Google map with your own locations is pretty easy. Adding customizable icons and creating preferences that allow you to display only certain icons takes a little more skill.

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