Protecting Electoral Integrity in Emerging Democracies

Abstract

AbstractA lack of electoral integrity in developing democracies undermines political accountability and the public good by yielding leaders who lack a governing mandate. Despite citizen activism and resources from donors to improve transparency, poor administrative functioning, corruption, and barriers to participation persistently degrade elections. This chapter presents “photo quick count” election technology and an ICT-enabled citizen adaption platform “VIP:Voice.” Photo quick count is a low-cost, ICT-capable, independently managed monitoring system of election results that provides polling station level photographic records of tally sheets to audit alongside certified results. The audit detects procedural failures by election officials and aggregation fraud (rigging that occurs in results transmission), and can deter administrative problems and corruption by announcing the audit to polling officials. First deployed in Afghanistan, iterations in Uganda and Kenya helped develop usage across national coverage and new mobile devices. This pivoted to broadening adoption and functionality using a crowdsourced platform in South Africa, VIP:Voice, that recruited citizen users through ICT channels with no pre-existing infrastructure and incorporates volunteers for photo quick count. This case furthers evidence on instruments for policy guidance on the mechanisms and cost-effective tools to bolster institutional performance and elections at scale.