montenegro
Posted by KatrinVerclas on Aug 12, 2007
In Sierra Leone's national election today, 500 election observers at polling stations around the country are reporting on any irregularities via SMS with their mobile phones. Independent monitoring of elections via cell phone is growing aqround the world, spearheaded by a few innovative NGOs.
The story starts in Montenegro, a small country in the former Yugoslavia. On May 21, 2006 the country saw the first instance of volunteer monitors using SMS, also known as text messaging, as their main election reporting tool. A Montenegrin NGO, the Center for Democratic Transition (CDT), with technical assistance from the National Democratic Institute (NDI) in the United States, was the first organization in the world to use text messaging to meet all election day reporting requirements.
