Ahead of U.S.A elections on 8th November, Kenyan based software company Ushahidi has for the second time launched a crowd-sourced campaign to keep tabs on any irregularities that might happen during the elections.
According to TechCrunch, the campaign is be dubbed USA Election Monitor and will track voting irregularities reported via its website, email, Twitter, WhatsApp and SMS.
The platform was developed by Kenyan coders in the aftermath of Kenya’s disputed 2007 presidential election that collected eyewitness reports and it helped record about 1300 deaths. Over time, the platform has been deployed over 100,000 times in 160 countries globally to monitor violence during election periods.
“There are some issues in this U.S. election that are pretty unprecedented around voter suppression and other voting irregularities,” Ushahidi’s Executive director David Were was quoted by the Techcrunch.
Were says the US platform will be used to report issues to do with long lines, ballot issues, voter suppression/violence and even positive experiences.
According to Techcrunch, Ushahidi will manage the 2016 U.S. operation from its Nairobi headquarters with a team of its 30 staff across 8 countries including the U.S.
Ushahidi will apply the methodologies and expertise gained observing elections around the world in places such as Kenya, South Sudan and Japan to its 2016 USA Election Monitoring campaign. “We’ve designed the platforms and the teams to remove the subjective and review each piece of data objectively before posting,” said Were.
“The legitimacy of the 2016 U.S. presidential election has been called into question through a number of unusual claims from Republican candidate Donald Trump. Chiefly, that the voting system is “rigged” and the American media is colluding to assist his opponent Hillary Clinton. Trump’s backed this up with somewhat unspecific calls for his supporters to monitor the polls, which has raised concerns of potential intimidation or even violence at U.S. voting stations” Techcrunch
Were says that when Ushahidi’s US Election Monitor campaign tracks significant instances of instability, they have a methodology to review and escalate to the issues to the relevant authorities who include election officials or law enforcement officials.
(Source; TechCrunch)
