· August, 2011

Stories about Elections from August, 2011

Egypt: Omar Soliman Facebook Army

A poll conducted by the Supreme Council of Armed Forces on their Facebook page to see how much support each of the potential Egyptian presidential elections candidates had on the ground yielded 'fishy' results. Here are reactions online after news emerged that a Facebook army was hired to tweak them.

Singapore Elects New President

  28 August 2011

Dr Tony Tan was elected Singapore's seventh president on August 27 with a winning margin of only 7,269 votes. This was enough to beat the three other candidates in Singapore’s first presidential election in 18 years.

Liberia: Voting Ends in Liberia's Referendum

  24 August 2011

Voting ends in Liberia 23rd August referendum with the Liberia's Election Coordinating Committee (ECC), which deployed 400 elections observers throughout 15 counties reporting that voting was peaceful. The referendum was marred with an error on the ballot paper…

Latvia: Electoral Expectations

  24 August 2011

Veiko Spolitis of Baltic blog spans the pollster field in the runup to the 17 September parliamentary elections in Latvia and finds that a great but decreasing proportion of voters are still undecided.

Russia: “Democracy Without Balls”

RuNet Echo  21 August 2011

Oleg Klimov writes [ru] that Mikhail Gorbachev, speaking on the 20th anniversary of the Soviet Union's collapse, said that “Putin is no dictator – he has just castrated democracy by depriving citizens of the democratic right to choose.”

Bermuda: BAD Call to Boycott

  18 August 2011

“Bermudians Against the Draft have launched a campaign to persuade young black men not to cast their ballot in the next general election [because] neither political party supports their position”: Respice Finem disagrees, on the grounds “that disengagement keeps the status quo in place and renders you voiceless.”

Russia: Arresting Political Opposition

  17 August 2011

Vladimir Kara-Murza of Spotlight on Russia argues that Putin's Russia is becoming increasingly Kafkaesque as opposition leader Boris Nemtsov again – twice in two days – has been arrested for exercising political rights and freedoms, at the same time as Prime Minister Putin is seemingly becoming all the more detached...

Argentina: Primary Elections and Future Presidential Candidates

  17 August 2011

On August 14, Argentina held primary elections to select presidential candidates for the upcoming October elections. The current president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, won the absolute majority for re-nomination, obtaining more than 50% of the vote. On Twitter netizens shared all kinds of reactions.

Latvia: Uncertain Election Outcome

  17 August 2011

Veikko Spolitis of Baltic blog discusses the uncertain political situation in Latvia subsequent to the 23 July referendum resulting in a call for new parliamentary elections on September 17, where a third of the electorate is undecided whom to vote for.

Bulgaria: Mapping Crime and Electoral Violations

  17 August 2011

Bulgarian blogger Boyan Yurukov has set up Bulgaria's first Ushahidi-based site, Crime.bg, whose goal is to collect signals of crimes and irregularities, via the site itself as well as through mobile applications, Twitter and Facebook. On his blog, Yurukov explained the reasons [bg] for creating Crime.bg: “1. People's lack of...

Madagascar: Sanctions Result in Economic Decline and Food Insecurity

  16 August 2011

After two and a half years of transitional government, Madagascar has experienced a slow, seemingly unstoppable decline of its fragile economy that has put a strain on the lives of millions. With an economy ranked worst in the world and a food crisis looming, Malagasy citizens debate the merits and impacts of international sanctions