A Completely Transparent View of Government Elections
How Social Media, Convenience and Money Have Dictated Unfair Elections and Can Finally Be Stamped Out
Some of the most fraudulent elections internationally have occurred before the advent of social media and its potential massive influence. Some of those include: UK General Elections, Birmingham and Hackney, 2001 and 2005, Philippine General Elections Under Ferdinand Marcos, 1965–1986, and the Kenyan General Election of 2007. Now that we have even more channels in which to corrupt an election, it is getting more complicated to ensure an election draws out a genuine winning party that adequately reflects the wishes of the community. The role for designers to create a transparent process and election itself has never been more important.
We can all agree that social media is the right place to reach the voting public since that’s one place almost everyone is, regardless of personal persuasion, interests and (to a large degree) age. Baby boomers and senior citizens tend to be the least savvy with social media, however they are the groups more likely to engage with other media channels and find candidate promotion there. Or they may even seek it out themselves. Aside from them, the rest of the voting age public can be found on Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok or Twitter, and this is therefore likely to be where parties throw their energy. Unfortunately, this is where a lot of problems come in.
The first problem I can think of is accessibility of social media promotion opportunities. Whilst the cost per advertising unit is low, it all quickly adds up. The parties with the most money have more of it to spend on social media advertising. A voter may experience a big presence on their social media accounts from one party, and may therefore assume that this party is more relevant. Also, studies have shown that voters may subconsciously consider this party favourably, just because they see their ads and promotional material more frequently. This of course is not true — it simply means that another party may not have had as big a budget for their social media spend.
Google and social media have a very clever way in sending you more of what it thinks you like to see. You are much less likely to accidentally access an article here, than if you were reading a magazine or newspaper, where all the articles have equal priority. For example, if you are curious about sports cars one day, and search “sports cars” a number of articles and images of various sports cars will be displayed for you. This means, in the future, that these types of articles are more likely to appear when you search for “car” or even just on your generic newsfeed, before you search for anything. You may notice adverts for “sports cars” suddenly cropping up on your social media accounts too. With so much exposure to “sports cars,” you may find yourself being convinced its worthwhile to get one, because everyone seems to have one and they seem to be “everywhere.” They are now, but weren’t before you first search for them! This applies to elections too. You may have found the promotional article of one party interesting and clicked into it. After that, Google is feeding you articles from that party left, right and centre. Even though other parties are represented, you aren’t seeing it.
This is just one of the election process. Come the day itself, a convenient, effective and transparent process for voting needs to be created. The ballet papers themselves need to be clear, with simple “check or number the box” instructions. There needs to be advice clearly nearby for those who aren’t sure what to do. The environment of the election day itself also needs to be accessible, comfortable and convenient to make voting more “attractive.” One example of where this didn’t happen were the Brisbane City Council elections. These took place at the end of March 2020, just as COVID-19 had started to take hold and a few days before official lockdown. Advise was to stay home, yet locals in Brisbane were also expected to queue in a public place to cast their vote. Unfortunately, an online election had not yet been designed.
Finally there is a way to efficiently manage elections while also maintaining transparency throughout the process. Designit recently worked with Smartmatic, a leading international provider of election technology and services, to create an efficient and auditable voting machine that would modernize elections and promote citizen participation. The result was a more inclusive and adaptable system to facilitate voting and increase voter participation, while also maintaining a rigorous level of security. The new voting machine can be used in any political election as it can be adapted to local voting laws and regulations.
The election process as it exists definitely needs to be overhauled. It is feared that systems as they stand now are able to be rigged, meaning the voice of the community is not being heard. Energy, time and money is spent each year on pulling apart the vote of questionable or unpopular outcomes, yet this can be avoided if a safe, efficient and transparent process can be utilised from the start.
