Monitorizare Vot and why I chose to be an observer

In less than 17 days we have the first round of the 2019 presidential elections in Romania.

It will be for the fifth time that election observation will be made using the Monitorizare Vot ecosystem developed pro-bono by our volunteers. Monitorizare Vot has transformed an analog pen & paper process into one whereby information is transmitted by hundreds of real-time field observers to their organizations, giving them the opportunity to act as quickly as possible to correct the detected problems, but also the possibility to collect data on the basis of which a detailed analysis of the elections can take place. The impact of Monitorizare Vot was ensured by the partners in the Fiecare Vot coalition who managed to attract record numbers of volunteers as independent observers in these years, creating, I believe, the most coherent and powerful manifestation of civicism in the last decades: hundreds of simple citizens sacrificing whole days of their lives to make sure that the main institution of democracy, the vote, is conducted correctly.

This year, as always, we put the Monitorizare Vot ecosystem and all our assistance at the disposal of any NGO that is involved in the election observation process and, as always, we do this completely free of charge. For the fifth time in a row, all organizations joining the FiecareVot coalition will use this ecosystem to observe elections. Funky Citizens, our partner in the last 4 rounds of elections, chose to observe these elections separately from the Each Voting coalition using a new methodology under the slogan VotNuTroc. We also offered our free support, but Funky Citizens chose not to use Monitorizare Vot in the process of reporting to the presidential election. However, we are optimistic that after the completion of this electoral cycle we will work with them to create a mechanism to serve their new methodology.

For those of you who want to continue to use the Monitorizare Vot application to report from the polling stations based on which real-time action will be taken and the post-election report will be developed, you can register as independent observers on fiecarevot.ro. I personally have already done it. I look forward to discovering the new, vastly improved, version of the application together, version which was developed as usual pro-bono by our colleagues.

I want to thank them but also the Code for Romania sponsors and partners who sacrifice their free time or allocate their own resources to support our projects that make Romania a more functional country.

Bogdan Ivănel

CEO & co-founder Code for Romania