Analyzing Data, Documenting Election Fraud

November 7th was a bad day for worldwide democracy.

As Ian has discussed and partners on the ground have documented the military elections in Burma were a disaster. At the same time, Azerbaijian held parliamentary elections that "cannot be considered free and fair" as NDI's partner, the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Center (EMDS) found in their hard-hitting report. Violations included ballot box stuffing, multiple voting, not bothering to post final numbers, etc. EMDS was on the ground, documenting it all. EMDS monitors, observing at a statistically-selected sample of polling places, reported data into a central headquarters.

Using a web-based system to enter the information from each observer, coordinators were able to look for gaps, do on-the-fly analysis to flag anomalous results, and look at trends by district, time, or other criteria. The central database was built by local developers, and enabled EMDS to rapidly aggregate, process, and examine these observer reports. EMDS was able to rapidly report on the situation and call out the regime for their electoral abuse.

In election monitoring, technology helps our partners reach their goal: making a complete, accurate statement on what has happened at the polls, complete with stories and solid data. Presented to the people and to the world, a factual statement full of anecdote documenting a stolen election paints a powerful picture.

During the Azerbaijian monitoring mission, observers encountered enormous pressure - so much so that 40 of EMDS’s observers refused to monitor under the circumstances and 10 were removed from polling stations. When you're encountering that much pressure, you know you're making a difference.

Hats off to EMDS and all the other brave election observers documenting the abuse of democracy worldwide.

For more on election monitoring, Jared has written up an example of cellphones to provide rapid data collection for elections. Photo of Maiden's Tower, Baku, Azerbaijan by Teuchterlad