Crowdsource election fraud reports
VotoTestigo, a prototype by Clarín (Argentina)
Election rigging has been getting a lot of press around the US presidential election with Donald Trump’s (unfounded) claims of large-scale voter fraud. For decades, Argentinian elections have been plagued by claims of fraud which are difficult for journalists — or anyone — to verify. Last October, Clarín won the Editors Lab in Buenos Aires for their app VotoTestigo, a crowdsourced platform for alerting suspected fraud at the ballot box.
Their prototype lets users anonymously report any irregularities, delays, data manipulation and attempted fraud during elections. The name, “VotoTestigo”, translates to “Vote Witness”. Each report is tagged through geolocation and users can send in photos or videos to the app. The project can facilitate fact-checking by centralising all claims on one platform. The reports can then be published on platforms that any media outlet or NGO can use on their sites.
The team said they were driven to create VotoTestigo because they lacked tools that centralise reporting irregularities during the election process.
They demonstrated a mockup app at the Editors Lab that was operational with a mock data feed.
Read more about this Editors Lab: Hack Day en Clarín: crearon aplicaciones para las elecciones
See the presentation of VotoTestigo
