New Research Suggests Text Messages Improve Election Day ... · New Research Suggests Text Messages...
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Edition: US US EDITION INDIA BRASIL U.K. MAGHREB JAPAN DEUTSCHLAND CANADA KOREA FRANCE ESPANA ALL SECTIONS New Research Suggests Text Messages Improve Election Day Turnout in the Developing World, With Conditions 04/08/2016 03:16 pm ET | Updated 2 days ago Tavneet Suri Associate Professor at MIT Sloan and development economist with a regional focus on sub-Saharan Africa. Her research centers on agriculture. It’s well known that mobile phones are changing every day life in the developing world — particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. The spread of cell phones coupled with the ease and efficiency of text messaging helps people save, spend, and invest their money more wisely. Text messages and mobile apps improve health outcomes by teaching people about nutrition and reminding patients to take their medication. They also further education by helping students learn more effectively through virtual tutoring. We now have evidence that text messages improve civic engagement in emerging countries by encouraging people to vote. A recent study I conducted in Kenya with Benjamin Marx, an economist at MIT, and Vincent Pons, of Harvard Business School, found that get-out-the-vote text messages increased Election Day turnout by as much as 2 percentage points. This increased participation in democracy comes with a condition, however. If voters perceive that elections aren’t free and fair, they lose trust. Put another way: when voters willingly place their faith in electoral institutions — the very essence of voting — those institutions had better make good on their promises. Democracy in the developing world is a fragile thing. Corruption and fraud are common features of elections and understandably, voters feel disillusioned and angry. In Kenya’s 2007 election, that anger turned to bloodshed. After Kenya’s election commission ignored evidence of vote rigging that kept the ruling government in power, the country erupted into violence and hundreds of people were killed. The following year, Kenya’s government worked to rebuild trust. The SUGGESTED FOR YOU Rick Scott Releases Attack Ad On Starbucks Woman Who Called Him An 'Asshole' HuffPost WorldPost [email protected] Subscribe! Get top stories and blog posts emailed to me each day. Newsletters may offer personalized content or advertisements. Learn More. HUFFPOST NEWSLETTERS FOLLOW HUFFPOST New Research Suggests Text Messages Improve Election Day Tur... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tavneet-suri/did-u-vote-2day-keny... 1 of 4 4/11/16, 10:52 AM
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Edition: US
US EDITION INDIA BRASIL U.K. MAGHREB JAPAN DEUTSCHLAND CANADA KOREA FRANCE ESPANA ALL SECTIONS
New Research Suggests Text Messages ImproveElection Day Turnout in the Developing World,With Conditions 04/08/2016 03:16 pm ET | Updated 2 days ago
Tavneet SuriAssociate Professor at MIT Sloan and development economist with a regional focus on sub-Saharan Africa. Her research centers on agriculture.
It’s well known that mobile phones are changing every day life in thedeveloping world — particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. The spread of cellphones coupled with the ease and efficiency of text messaging helpspeople save, spend, and invest their money more wisely. Text messagesand mobile apps improve health outcomes by teaching people aboutnutrition and reminding patients to take their medication. They alsofurther education by helping students learn more effectively throughvirtual tutoring.
We now have evidence that text messages improve civic engagement inemerging countries by encouraging people to vote. A recent study Iconducted in Kenya with Benjamin Marx, an economist at MIT, andVincent Pons, of Harvard Business School, found that get-out-the-votetext messages increased Election Day turnout by as much as 2percentage points. This increased participation in democracy comes witha condition, however. If voters perceive that elections aren’t free and fair,they lose trust. Put another way: when voters willingly place their faith inelectoral institutions — the very essence of voting — those institutionshad better make good on their promises.
Democracy in the developing world is a fragile thing. Corruption andfraud are common features of elections and understandably, voters feeldisillusioned and angry. In Kenya’s 2007 election, that anger turned tobloodshed. After Kenya’s election commission ignored evidence of voterigging that kept the ruling government in power, the country erupted intoviolence and hundreds of people were killed.
The following year, Kenya’s government worked to rebuild trust. The
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country adopted political reforms and created a new constitution. It alsoreplaced its old electoral commission with a new one: the IndependentElectoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), tasked with creating a newregister of voters across the country. Before the 2013 election, the IEBCpurchased biometric voter registration kits, based on fingerprinttechnology, to mitigate identification issues at polling stations.
To study the effects of text messages on people’s voting behavior, wepartnered with IEBC to conduct an experiment. In the six days leading upto the election, we sent eleven million texts to slightly less than twomillion prospective voters across Kenya. The messages were intended torally voters and provided either basic encouragements to vote,background on the changes in the elective positions that people couldvote for, or information on the electoral commission itself. The IEBC wasunder intense public scrutiny during the electoral period. The textmessages were its way of reaching out to voters in a gesture of honestyand openness.
On one hand, the intervention succeeded: using official electoral resultsas well as independently collected survey data, we found that the textmessages increased voter turnout by 1 to 2 percentage points. Ourresults suggest that text messages are a quick, cost-effective way topromote individual civic and political engagement. (By our estimate, theIEBC spent between 28 and 56 cents per increased participant — anegligible cost in the eyes of any political body).
But on the other hand, the text messages failed. They raised voters’expectations that the election would be free, fair, and orderly — and theIEBC did not deliver. On Election Day, much of the expensive biometricequipment that it relied on to guarantee a transparent election crashed,as did the electronic system for the transmission of results from eachpolling station to the central server. This shattered the high expectationsthe IEBC had set for a well-organized election. And as a result, the textmessages — which were meant to instill confidence in Kenya’sprecarious democracy — decreased trust in the electoral commission by5%. According to our survey, this decrease in trust was concentratedamong those whose preferred candidate lost.
Our findings highlight the challenges of building trust in democracy. Whileit’s clear that get-out-the-vote text messages have enormous potential toincrease civic engagement and participation, it’s also clear that thesemessages carry an implicit promise of transparency and openness. Whenthe promise is broken, voters lose confidence.
Getting voters to the polls and providing them education is essential toany democracy, but voters also need to have faith in the democraticprocess and the institutions at the helm. Building that credibility is noteasy: promising and then failing to deliver can have detrimental effects onthe very trust you are trying to build.
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* The Perils of Building Democracy in Africa by Benjamin Marx, VincentPons, and Tavneet Suri
Tavneet Suri is an Associate Professor of Applied Economics at the MITSloan School of Management.
Follow Tavneet Suri on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mitsloanexperts
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