Crowdsourcing the Guatemalan Election Cycle

Photo: Associated Press

Ushahidi has just been deployed in Guatemala for monitoring of the election cycle there, with a really slick interface. It looks like they have a pretty robust participation and reporting as the national race goes to a runoff between two right-wing, "ley y orden" candidates. Fun tidbits include the Partido Patriota buying votes for about $38 a head in Xela and election workers being assaulted in the capital:



Guatemala is a mess, but they don't need some hack gringo from the subarctic to say so. What they need is a "Functioning-Civil-Society-in-a-Box" and the instantaneous establishment of rule of law. They were stripped of these things over years of civil war that we in the U.S. abetted, but I have hope of their return when I see a crowdsourcing application like this bring a little bit of transparency to an otherwise-depressing democratic exercise.