The Impact of Crowdsourced Monitoring on Electoral Integrity: The Case of Turkey

• In Event: Does Civil Society Really Serve Democracy?

Abstract

Election monitoring is a set of activities that are conducted by international organizations and domestic groups during election periods in order to ensure electoral integrity, including observing campaigns, promoting voter registration, training locals, verifying vote tallies, parallel vote counting and reporting malpractices. Monitoring groups promote the transparency and credibility of the elections, shape public perceptions about the integrity of an election and also give legitimacy to the regime. While there is a large volume of published studies concerned with the impact of international monitoring organizations on electoral integrity, more recent attention has been focused on the impact of domestic monitoring initiatives. With the recent advances in technology, new opportunities have emerged for online participation and plurality of voices in democratic processes. Election monitoring activities are now increasingly being conducted online, which means that hundreds of citizens are able to contribute. These are known as crowdsourced initiatives. However, there has been little research concerning the effect of crowdsourced groups on electoral integrity.

This study aims to investigate the impact of Oy ve Ötesi (Vote and Beyond), a crowdsourced monitoring initiative, on electoral integrity in Turkey from 2014 to the present day. It was formed in the aftermath of the Gezi resistance, a wave of protests and civil unrest in 2013 that mobilized hundreds of people. In an increasingly competitive authoritarian context, Oy ve Ötesi could mobilize more than 40,000 volunteers in a short period of time to take part in domestic monitoring, including promoting voter turnout and political awareness. By employing quantitative methods, this study attempts to answer the following questions: How does Oy ve Ötesi mobilize citizens? How well does Oy ve Ötesi detect electoral fraud? How effective is it at uncovering electoral malpractices? The research data in this study is drawn from surveys on volunteer experiences and reports on electoral malpractices conducted by Oy ve Ötesi.

Author

• Basak Bozkurt, University of Oxford