Mobile Phones Being Used To Bring Fairer Elections To Africa
from the good-news dept
We report on so many stories where technology is used in bad or oppressive ways, that it's important to note when it's being used in positive ways as well. Technology, itself, is just a tool that can be used in both good and bad ways (not to mention neutral ways), but somehow the good ways don't always get as much attention. CNN has an article detailing how the rise of mobile phones throughout Africa is helping in making elections that are more fair. It's certainly not perfect yet, but the ability to communicate has allowed citizens to report abuses of the election process and get the word out when they see any kind of cheating happening.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: africa, elections, mobile phones
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
When is it coming here?
Seriously, same cellphones can be used to spread misinformation. Anyways whats the power of information against gun? We know thousands of people are being killed in Darfur, Iraq, Afghanistan,...........list goes on! So what??
Sometime that kind technology is exploited by..... the exploiters, but don't hold ur breath to bring democracy to Africa!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: When is it coming here?
Diebold/Premier have released a press statement that you'll be getting the technology to monitor them just as soon as they can provide it and calculate the bill
They are, however, a little busy fixing the random vote stealing bug in their software however
Apparently all you conspiracy theorists were dead wrong with your wild claims that votes were going missing, which you continually requested more information to prove. In no way were the votes going missing in the manner you thought they were, it was *cough* a different way entirely
Now please could you all turn around for a moment so they can rewrite *cough cough* remove the erm... bug?
Go back to sleep America.....
[ link to this | view in chronology ]