Noticias

July News 2018

Currently @ LATINNO

This month, Mexico's historical turnout in its general elections was accompanied by various forms of participation that went well beyond attendance to the polls. Besides presenting you our favorite democratic innovation during the country's 2018 elections, this newsletter will talk about how participatory spaces that engage citizens in the electoral process have been present across the entire region.

They mainly consist of oversight bodies that supervise campaigns, political promises, and transparency during elections through digital and non-digital means, but other forms of political experimentation have been recorded as well. For instance, some innovations provide and verify information regarding candidates, and create spaces of dialogue between citizens and political leaders. 

Oversight Bodies

The LATINNO project maintains in its database more than 2,500 cases of political experimentation across 18 countries in Latin America. Among the different types of democratic innovations, certain institutional designs aim at monitoring and tracking the performance of public policies, public servants, public service delivery, institutions or resources. These oversight bodies occasionally rely on digital means such as apps or internet platforms.


Featured Cases

Ojo con el Voto
Argentina

The Ojo con el Voto (lit. Eye on the Vote) is a smartphone app that allows voters to monitor, report and inform about their voting experience. It is a tool designed so that the voter can flag possible irregularities in real time by using geolocation. The complaints are then collected by the organization Poder Ciudadano (lit. Citizen Power), which sends them to the Center for Legal Advice and Citizen Action (ALAC) where records are analyzed and eventually raised in a report to the National Electoral Chamber.

Your Local Representatives
Costa Rica

Your Local Representatives is a collaborative platform that allowed citizens to learn more about the candidates running in the municipal elections of 2016 in Costa Rica. In the website, each voter could search for or add information about candidates for mayors and councilors in the 81 Cantons of the country. This digital innovation created a database that included each candidate's photograph, email, social network accounts, official website, position in the party list, profession and important background information.

Unlike the information located on the website of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, which includes only the information provided by the parties, Your Local Representatives had greater flexibility in investigating and collecting data. This information came from sources as varied as party publications, social networks, press articles or interviews with candidates in local media outlets. All the data collected were made available to the public under an open license.
 
 

PolétikaRD
Dominican Republic

PolétikaRD is an interactive online tool that allows citizens from the Dominican Republic to monitor whether elected candidates were keeping the promises made during their policial campaigns. Furthermore, it allowed citizens to directly contact candidates for the 2016 Presidential Elections.

Covering different areas, such as politicians' support for gender equality, state reform, and social security, Pol_tikaRD indicates the extent to which candidates have already voiced their position on each subject matter. It lists channels of communication, such as social media pages, giving citizens direct ways to interact with the candidates.

 

Newest Innovation

#NiUnFraudeMás
Mexico

The citizen observatory #NiUnFradeMás (en. No More Fraud) is a participatory space that combines digital and non-digital means with the aim of strengthening the process to elect the Governor of the Federal State of Mexico. It works by engaging citizens in the oversight of the electoral process before, during and after election day. The observatory gathered 619 citizen complaints—most of them reported coercion and vote buying.