Revolutionizing election transparency in Africa through innovative technology and democratic participation.
Election Audits (EA) is a non-profit startup that provides a technology platform for auditing elections primarily in Africa and other parts of the global south. The ideal election that can be audited by EA is conducted using paper ballots at polling stations. Furthermore, the paper ballots are publicly counted and then an agent of the country’s electoral commission fills out a summary sheet (e.g. pink sheet in Ghana) containing the results at that polling station. EA uses this summary sheet, the Polling Station Results Document (PSRD) as the basis for performing election audits. It is expected that: paper ballots are counted in the full glare of the public, and a PSRD is filled out by an agent of the electoral commission in the presence of political party agents (who possibly sign the PSRD). If the two conditions hold, there is high confidence that the data on a PSRD reflects the result of the voting process at a given polling station. Thus the PSRDs from respective polling stations can be used in an audit to crosscheck the results in a given constituency, district, country, etc.
In many African countries, elections are marked by periods of great uncertainty and chaos. The challenges are systemic and multifaceted, requiring a comprehensive solution.
Electoral governing bodies often lack true independence from government influence, compromising the integrity of the election process.
Widespread corruption undermines electoral integrity through various forms of manipulation and fraud.
Inefficient collation and announcement of results create delays and opportunities for manipulation.
Election Audits aims to curb election malpractice in Africa and beyond, by obtaining and collating the official Polling Station Result Documents (PSRDs) and presenting them to the general public in a timely fashion. The political party agents who observe the elections at the polling stations would create accounts on the EA app. Using the app on election day, each agent would upload picture(s) of the PSRDs, as well as a summary of results. The uploads by multiple party agents would be cross-compared to yield a higher level of confidence in the submitted results. The public would thus be able to see the results of an election from the polling station level, all the way to the national level.
Election Audits follows a systematic approach for each country, beginning well in advance of the election period. Our process focuses on comprehensive data collection and verification.