Friday 10 December 2010

Kosovo elections - who is concerned and why.

This week the USA said it was concerned about the conduct of the forthcoming Kosovo elections.
Here are some resources for finding out who is concerned and why.
IFES has some background information on the electoral system and previous elections. It also has some other recent publications assessing recent votes.
OSCE has monitored past elections and historic reports can be read on its website
More up to date analysis can be read on
the Balkan Insight news service.
SE Times news service
and B92
Other local observers of the elections include The Kosovo Democratic Institute
Kosovo Foundation for Democratic Society
and ENEMO which is conducting an international observaer mission to the region in 2010

Thursday 2 December 2010

Egypt elections - crowd mappings and other online monitoring systems.

This week the US government criticised the conduct of the Egyptian elections

During the elections a number of organisations used the web to enable citizens to get involved in reporting fraud in the elections. See this useful discussion of the examples in the TechPresident blog some examples of these (most in Arabic) can be viewed online. They include
Egypt elections crowdmap
shahid 2010
www.aswatna-eg.net also has examples of sites being used by the public.
For English discussion of the state of democracy in Egypt and conduct of elections. These sites are useful
Project on Middle East Democracy has a good blog with up to date postings.
Al-Jazeera coverage which includes blogs and interviews
Al-Masry news from Egypt
A number of international organisations have also conducted assessments.
International Idea has a section of reports.
The Global Integrity report has assessments and rankings of the state of corruption in Egypt from 2009.
The ACE Project has some recent reports plus links to encyclopedia style entries on the nature of the electoral system.
The Carnegie Endowment Arab Reform section has some up to date commentary and some past papers on the state of politics in Egypt.
The Council on Foreign Relations also has some background papers