The idea of ​​a mobile application for election observers

    I will start, perhaps, with the fact that, like many others, I applied for inclusion in the lists of observers for the upcoming elections, and if everything goes well, I will fulfill this honorable duty on December 4.

    In order to be ready for everything, I read several brochures, and in almost every authors advise to make some calculations in the mind / notebook, then to compare them with the data entered in the final protocol. In particular, it is proposed to approximately count the number of voters, as well as to count (at least approximately) the number of votes for a particular party together with the commission (after opening the ballot boxes, ballots are disassembled by members of the commission, and each vote cast for the party is announced out loud).

    I apologize for such a long introduction, but it, I think, will help to understand the essence of the idea. And the idea is simple - to make an application for the election observer, which helps in such calculations. Unfortunately, I do not have enough experience to quickly and accurately write such an application, but maybe someone has enough time, knowledge and initiative to implement the idea?



    I see the application itself quite simple. It will work in 2 modes. Mode 1 - counting the number of voters, mode 2 - total counting of votes.

    Mode 1 - Voters

    In this mode, it will be enough for the observer to click on the big +1 button each time the next ballot falls into the box. If the observer was distracted, made calculations in his mind to save battery, or for some reason did not press +1 several times - you can make an additional small button ~ + N, which will open the input field for the approximate number of ballots dropped into the ballot box while the observer was distracted. This number will be summarized separately and then will be displayed next to the total number of voters as invalid.

    Ideally, of course, it would be still useful to enable the user to set in advance the total number of voters who have the right to vote in this polling station in order to show an approximate turnout in real time.

    Mode 2 - Voices

    In this mode, the user will be shown N + 1 buttons on the main screen: N buttons for the number of parties and 1 for invalid ballots.

    As in the first mode, it will be enough for the observer to press a button with the name of the party for which a vote was cast in the currently announced bulletin. And just like in the first mode, it should be possible to add an arbitrary number of votes if the counting is done by the preliminary sorting method and then recounting the number of ballots in each folder.

    For an approximate indication of the counting progress, you can use the first digit (about the number of voters), or the manually set number of voters who have already voted, which at this stage will already be determined in the process of counting from the voters lists.

    Accordingly, both the current percentage distribution of votes and the percentage of processed ballots can be displayed to the user.

    Extra goodies

    As ideas for the next versions, say - for the election of the President of the Russian Federation - it will be possible to implement another useful functionality:
    • emergency inclusion of a voice recorder or camera to fix the violation, with the possible upload of recorded material immediately to the Internet, so that the police do not have time to confiscate the phone along with the recordings
    • periodically sending statistics on the site to a remote server so that you can monitor the turnout in real time, and then the vote count
    • approximation of moments when the observer was distracted - this means the behavior of the ~ + N button, in which the user, after some prolonged inactivity, wants to enter the number of people who voted in his opinion for this period of time, and the program displays a reference value calculated from the average number as a reference point people who have already arrived over the same period of time (that is, if in the last hour, say, an average of 2 people voted every minute, and then the user was not active 15 Inuit, the program will show him the reference number 30)
    • verification of data from several observers in the same area - this means processing on the server data from several observers in the same area and statistical comparison of these data in order to establish the degree of reliability or fill in the gaps in the calculations

    etc.

    Obvious problems

    Of course, the main problem will be the high power consumption of the phone. It is unlikely that he will be able to work with the screen on all the time while voting and vote counting are taking place. I hope that at the polling station it will be possible to recharge the phone if necessary, but, of course, this can become a problem, especially if there is a confrontation with members of the commission.

    The second problem is the apparent illegitimacy of such a calculation. So this, of course, is only a “tool for oneself”, which will only allow one to suspect falsification, and not prove it.

    Instead of a conclusion

    I understand very well that there is very little time left before the elections, and I am also well aware that “if you want something done, do it yourself”, but still I publish this idea in the sandbox in the hope that there will be an enthusiast who will be able to realize something similar to what I described before December 4, and thereby help several hundred people trying to make these elections a little more honest.

    PS About the election process, the rights of observers and aspects of the vote count can be found here .

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