World Witness

Article

An Economist special report on the rise of mobile-phone-based election monitoring, tracing how a 2006 pilot in Montenegro — using ordinary citizens’ phones to text real-time voting data to a central system — became the standard model for observing elections in fragile democracies. It describes how the approach helped defuse a potential crisis during Sierra Leone’s 2007 election, when text-spread rumours of violence were quickly countered by observers texting in accurate reports, and quotes MobileActive.org’s Katrin Verclas on mobile phones’ unprecedented reach in expanding civic participation.