Ecuador Chooses · Global Voices
David Sasaki

It has been a year of controversial and closely-contested elections throughout Latin America. As electoral observers take a restful sigh following the delayed conclusion of Felipe Calderón's controversial victory in Mexico, it is already time to look ahead to  Brazil, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Ecuador; all set to head to the polls in the coming months. Media professor, Christian Espinosa (ES) describes a decentralized effort by Ecuadorean citizen journalists (ES) to supplement the mainstream media's coverage of the upcoming presidential election.
A grassroots initiative (ES) from the blogosphere to cover the elections has begun to take form. The website at the domain Ecuador Elige (ES) (“Ecuador Chooses”) incorporates authors of diverse weblogs from different regions of the country to become citizen reporters documenting the campaigns of presidential candidates, outside the classic discourse of the media.
A video report from the border with Colombia is already up thanks to a report by a local channel that was uploaded by one of the bloggers to share it on YouTube, which would have been otherwise impossible to see in other cities.
The organization (ES) [of the project] was exclusively done online as per normal by the community of Ecuadorean bloggers (ES). Without meeting face to face, they managed to agree from Manabí, Quito, Guayaquil (ES), Carchi (ES), Riobamba, among other participant cities, how to begin the site.
Without a doubt it will help to know the similar experiences of other countries to better manage this opportunity…