Technology and Elections

The other night a friend was asking some questions about cell phone, and how they have changed behaviors. I think the intention of the question was about how our individual actions have changed, but I was reminded of a story from Senegal which shows about how it affected free, fair elections in an entire nation.

When I was leaving the country in summer of 1997, landlines were available house-to-house only in the 10 or so biggest cities, and large villages (say, pop>2,000) perhaps had a central pay phone available. At the time, cell phones were just becoming available. Fast-forward to 2000, and technological leap-frog had happened. Already no one is building landlines, and cell phones are EVERYWHERE. And there's a presidential election. Incumbent President Abdou Diouf lost, the first such loss of an incumbent president in sub-Saharan Africa. The reason he could not stuff the boxes? An unanticipated presence surprised everyone: the press quietly arranged for a reporter at nearly every polling station, conducting exit polls and calling in real-time results/predictions ON THEIR CELL PHONES from places that had never seen phones before. Perhaps Mr. Diouf would have been completely honest anyways, but he never got the chance. A free press with cell phones prevented any potential box stuffing.

Democracy due to technology?