Chris Van Buren at Internet & Democracy Blog has an interesting post today about how social media is being used in India to help ensure that country’s general election that kicked off last week is fair, or as fair as an event involving 700 million voters can be. Vote Report India is a “collaborative citizen-driven election monitoring platform” where users contribute direct SMS, email and Web-based reports on voting irregularities and other problems. The platform then aggregates those reports with news stories, blog and Twitter posts, photos and videos on an interactive map.
The idea is that this effort will bring more transparency and accountability to the month-long, five-phased election, dubbed the “worlds largest democratic event.” Vote Report India’s inspiration is Twitter Vote Report, which monitored voting problems and irregularities during last fall’s presidential and congressional elections. Our friends at TechPresident were instrumental in developing Vote Report, which just won a Golden Dot Award from the Institute for Politics, Democracy, & the Internet at George Washington University.