Ya Nos Vamos Pareciendo a África

Turns out Guachimán Electoral is using Kenyan software to track Venezuelan election day incidents.

Turns out the software the Instituto Prensa y Sociedad’s Guachimán Electoral is using to log and document election day incidents is cribbed from Ushahidi, a software platform developed in Kenya to track election violence there.

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Guachimán Electoral, or election watchman is a crowdsourcing platform that is already collecting and mapping citizen complaints. Witnesses to irregularities—from the use of government funds to promote candidates to election-related violence—can report them on the Guachimán’s website, or via text message, Twitter or WhatsApp.

The project, which was created by non-profit Instituto Prensa y Sociedad  and several online news outlets, uses technology developed by coders in Kenya to monitor violence after the 2007 elections in that country. Called Ushahidi, which means testimony in Kiswahili, the tool helped record some 1,300 deaths at that time.