Watching Senegal's election, in real time

"We are living a historic moment in our political history. We saw a first democratic transition of power in 2000, and we are now witnessing a second democratic transition in 2012. And I hope that we are consolidating our democracy, and cementing ourselves definitively in a full democracy. I think that through this election we have provided a lesson in maturity, a lesson in civics, a lesson in democracy. The Senegalese people have conducted themselves as true citizens, and I think we need to congratulate them all. And you (the Senevote2012 team) have done an amazing job — a job of transmitting information that enabled us to know the results, all the information, in real time, which allowed us to intervene in the electoral process. Each time that you told us about a problem, we were able to contact the authorities to tell them, 'look, at this location, there's something that's not working,' which enabled them to rectify the situation. Your work was absolutely decisive... Our monitoring mission was decisive. I was speaking to a European Union official just now and he said, 'it was incredible — you were everywhere!' And it's true, we were everywhere. The mere presence of an observer (at a polling station) was dissuasive... We succeeded in this electoral mission by linking two things — the technical and the political."

- Professor Babacar Guèye, President of the Coalition of Civil Society Organizations for the Elections (COSCE)

At 11:18 on Sunday morning March 25, Adama Sy found a bit of shade in the courtyard outside classroom 2B of Cherif Samsidine Aidara School in Sédhiou, southern Senegal. He was composing a text message: "Vote buying. Wade supporters giving 20,000 (about $40) to activists who vote for Wade. The voting was stopped for 30 minutes."

As a member of the civil society election monitoring team, he had been trained to watch for just this sort of thing. His job was to keep an eye on every aspect of the voting process at Cherif Samsidine School in his hometown, from the moment the polling officials arrived in the early morning until the official vote tally was signed, sealed, and sent off to a counting location late at night. At key moments throughout the day, he would send a coded text message to a central number, indicating what was — or was not — happening at and around the school.

Over 500 other "mObservers" joined Sy in the process, forming a data collection team that covered every one of Senegal's 45 districts ("departements" in French). The information they sent would all be analysed, aggregated, and displayed online at www.senevote2012.com — all in a matter of seconds — thanks to software developed by OneWorld specifically for these purposes. About 200 of the mObservers were then selected by statisticians from our international partner NDI to form a representative sample, whose results could be taken as a microcosm of the entire nation's, within a few percentage points.

The election monitoring effort was not a first for Senegal — the Civil Society Coalition for Elections (COSCE) has been doing this for years — but it was the first time they, and the rest of the world, could see what was happening in real time. The Observers were reporting on the process of opening the polling stations, the voting procedures employed throughout the day, and the poll closing and vote counting procedures. Were all the officials on time? Was the necessary equipment on hand? Was the ballot box publicly shown to be empty before voting began, and then was it locked so it couldn't be tampered with during the day? Were voters given a private space to fill out their ballot? Were polling officials checking everyone's fingers to make sure there was no ink on them, which would indicate they had already voted somewhere else?

By 8:15 in the morning, data started to flood in via SMS, and the map of Senegal began to light up. Veteran civil society leaders were able, for the first time ever, to have a graphical and statistical picture of what was going on across the country — in real time. Gathered in a "situation room" in Dakar, COSCE officials could take action as soon as Observers reported an incident that required intervention from higher up the political ladder. And by 9am they would already know if there were "trouble spots" where voting wasn't going as planned anywhere in the country.

But in fact, incidents like the one Adama Sy reported from Cherif Samsidine School were few and far between this time around. The map showed largely shades of green across all categories, all day long. The election was extremely clean, and as a result the vote count announced by the national electoral commission a few days later was never in dispute — not by the civil society monitors anyway. Their official statement was clear:

"Based on the preliminary results announced March 27, 2012 by the National Commission for Vote Counting, the (civil society) platform confirms that these results faithfully reflect the will expressed at the polls during the second round of voting in the presidential election."

How often do you see a civil society statement like that 48 hours after an African presidential election?

In the lead up to this hotly contested election, no one was sure what to expect. The incumbent president had already gone to great lengths to secure his spot on the ballot, and nobody knew if any extraordinary measures would be taken to boost his chances of winning a third term. How would the opposition party conduct itself? In the end, though, the presence of independent monitors at thousands of polling places amounted to a positive sort of intimidation — keeping would-be fraudsters at bay. It couldn't hurt that any shenanigans would also be recorded online for the world to know about.

And so later this month the 12-year incumbent will hand power over to his democratically elected successor and the Senegalese people will have a chance to build their country under fresh leadership. Legislative elections will then be held in July, offering a chance to renew the political class even further in what many consider Francophone West Africa's leading political and economic power.

The Observers will be on hand at polling booths across the nation then too, texting in any irregularities they witness for the whole world to see. Any candidates considering giving their campaigns an unnatural advantage would be wise to remember that, through the magic of the mobile phone and the online map, Senegal — and the world — will be watching.

It's impossible to know what would have happened last week if the monitoring machine hadn't been there, or if it had been there but not backed up by the instant, online publication of data. But we'll never have to know. This election monitoring technology is here to stay, and set to be used across Africa and beyond.

* For more information about Senevote2012 or the election monitoring technologies, contact OneWorld's Mobile4Good Programme Coordinator Jeffrey Allen at jeffrey.allen@oneworld.net.

Reactions to Senevote2012.com (videos below):

"I was covering elections in Cote d'Ivoire just before Christmas 2011, and definitely if I had seen something like this in Cote d'Ivoire it would have given us a better overview and analysis of what was happening in the country at the time. From what I've seen here, we'll be able to get a sense of what's happening on the ground much sooner than having to wait maybe days until there's actual counting and results come through."

- Brendan Fitzpatrick, British Foreign and Commonwealth Office Embassy Senegal

 

"It's truly the Senegalese people who have won - Senegalese democracy that has won. But we have participated actively in this victory by conducting an exemplary monitoring effort in which we linked the technical side with the political side. The technical side, with OneWorld, which enabled us to transmit data - supported by a fantastic team of technicians - that permitted us, the political actors, to take the decisions needed to effectively monitor this election...  We didn't conduct a traditional observation mission... we conducted a proactive, positive observation mission, during which we identified the dysfunctions in the system - and OneWorld enabled us to identify these dysfunctions and take action to correct them in real time."

- Professor Babacar Guèye, President of the Coalition of Civil Society Organizations for the Elections (COSCE)

 

"Local observers are quite experienced in Senegal. Through the application of unique technology that OneWorld has developed, they've been able to expand and enhance their observation efforts, which was probably pivotal in the case of Senegal's presidential election.... These tools enabled the local partner to make careful judgements based on results that they found that were statistically viable and were available quickly due to the technology. And the technology also allowed the information to get out quickly. The technology was able to present in a graphic way the information about observations that was so important for the overall acceptance of the results of this election."

- Mike Henning, Team Leader for Elections and Political Transitions in USAID Washington's Center for Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance

 

"It's a very good thing to provide alerts in real time about problems that arise, because there are always dysfunctions - it's not only in Senegal that this happens. In all democracies there are dysfunctions, and what's important is to fix them as quickly as possible."

- Sindiely Wade, daughter of Senegalese President and candidate Abdoulaye Wade