That said, I think that there were many efforts by many outlets to track what was going on with the election this year more than any election previous, mostly because this is the first election in the age of social tech. Media outlets were looking for user-generated stories (NPR asking for voter problem reports, CNN iReport, etc.), but on a certain level that still follows the old model of traditional media as filter and editorial vs. the model of raw, unfiltered content from the web that’s been growing for many years now. That’s not to say that the new model is here to stay, or perfect, for that matter, just that the dichotomy creates an interesting, muddled situation.

Twitter Vote Report is the type of raw data reaction that higher-level web users are craving, and that more average web users will begin to crave (like the auto-updated CNN, AP, and other electoral maps that everyone endlessly refreshed online while they watched the news). However, there were some bumps and bruises in the reporting, mostly due to user error, such as people not using hashtags correctly, so the data wasn’t being mashed up onto maps and charts as a result.

While it wasn’t a perfect system, it was an excellent first crack at the idea. If nothing else, it gives excellent food for though on your question, and raises the bar on improving the solution.

Zambia has just come from an election following the death of President Levy Mwanawasa.

While all ICT tools are great to use Zambia has monitors places at all polling centers to check for irregularities. For me i think it these monitors who need to be armed with an ICT tool that can collect central information on their reports on how an election was conducted.

Otherwise i feel the use of an SMS TOOLKIT would work well in times like this because the toolkit would have a generic form which could be filled in by the monitors so that we have a standard report.

in the developing world we have many radio stations and most homes have at least a radio and chances of them listening to the radio are very high compared to going using the internet which is not accessible to them.

Take a look at http://twitter.com/866ourvote and http://www.866ourvote.org (i.e. toll free #) they are combining phones with Twitter.

Seems like a good combination – they are using Twitter, but entirely relying upon it – and then using it to broadcast out summary reports.

Shannon