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Open Source Tech Used To Monitor Afghan Election
chrb writes "BBC News is reporting on how the Alive in Afghanistan project is helping to oversee the Afghan elections using open-source technologies. The site was set up by Brian Conley, who is also responsible for 'Alive in Baghdad', 'Alive in Mexico', and who was arrested for filming protests in China last year. The Afghan site uses FrontlineSMS and Ushahidi to process and visualize SMS texts from Afghani citizens, allowing reports from all over the country to be rapidly collated and re-distributed globally."
i hope it works, tho somehow i doubt it will do anything even if there is a lot of corruption
If you are interested in this sort of stuff, you might want to check out Gordon Brown's TED Talk on using technology to drive social change.
Unexpect the expected!
I'll wait to celebrate until I know how the election turns out.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
How hilarious would it be if Afghanistan ended up with a more verifiable vote than the U.S. because they used open source technology to track the election?
It doesn't matter as long as people think a) two candidates are enough, and b) they can let the ruling elite choose those candidates.
I wonder if walls can protect castles of cards.
He will be featured in either "Dead In A Seedy Hollywood Motel : Hookers And Blow" or "Dead In Detroit : I Met The Ethnic Equality Paradigm And Didn't Survive".
PC moderators can suck my White pierced, tattooed dick. If you think pride == hate, s/dick/Aryan meat mallet/g.
come with BombBlock Plus?
Open-source software is great, but doesn't really matter when all politicians are corrupt and most of the country have other priorities than voting, like getting to feed their families and avoid being killed by one side or the other.
I counted 6 presidential candidates last election and 4 different "major" parties. Also, I remember about 7-10 candidates for two of those major parties being DEMOCRATICALLY elected as the party's candidate by members of those parties. What election were you watching?
It will be a total sham and a waste of time.
Votes are being sold for $10 a pop, nobody expects the elections to be fair so whoever wins election results will be contested, election ink safeguard is washable (then again, that may save some people's fingers), 13-year-olds vote, there are reports of people being hanged for voting and somehow Britney Spears is registered to vote.
But yeah. Sure...
A map and a bunch of anonymous SMS messages will SURELY fix all that.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
What are they running now?
How hilarious would it be if Afghanistan ended up with a more verifiable vote than the U.S. because they used open source technology to track the election?
Unless women in USA start wearing chadors (and get to vote like that) it is highly unlikely.
Did Britney even vote in the US election?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
5+ Insightful? Thanks for reminding me why I rarely come to slashdot anymore.
Show me one democratic country where the two biggest parties don't get 70+% of all votes.
It's unfortunate that this entire thread appears to be about the politics of this situation and none about the tech. Ushahidi is the work of Erik Hersman and the folks at Afrigadget. I've been fortunate enough to hang out with Erik some and he's a really cool guy with some amazing ideas around tech and the developing world (specifically Africa in his case but they are applicable in many other settings.) If you are on twitter he's worth following - @whiteafrican
And FrontlineSMS has been getting great press lately as people have been getting more and more creative in its use. It is producing great results in first world countries as well as the developing world. What I find exciting though is that in the FrontlineSMS forums one meets developers that are helpful and even if they can't solve a persons problem, the code is all open and others are welcome to add the functionality they need. This is huge for the NGOs that they are able to get tools they need at little or no cost while at the same time not getting stuck with vendor lock in that limits their options. And it's a great tool.
Every so often we have an ask slashdot about how tech types can give back. FrontlineSMS and Ushahidi are two great examples of projects that are out their doing it in a big way and provide a great opportunity for geeks to get on board. If you are really hung up on worrying about Afghanistan, go to the sites of both and see all the other places they are being used in meaningful ways to make people's lives better.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
The article overestimates the effectiveness of this kind of monitoring. That's not to say it won't help to make the election fair, but it can only deal with certain kinds of problems, such as overt intimidation of voters at the polls. It has no effect on what takes place out of view: tampering with voting machines, throwing out ballots, false counting, false reporting of the count, intimidation of voters away from the polls, and intimidation of candidates.