Development Seed Blog

In a little more than a week In February Haiti is scheduled hopes to hold its first election since Aristide was ousted almost two years ago. So campaigning is in full swing. NPR reported that “the campaigning season has gotten under way, with posters, political rallies and candidate jingles flooding the streets and the airwaves. In a country where more than 50 percent of the people are illiterate, election jingles are one of the most powerful campaign tools.”

On one hand, it makes complete sense that in a country where an estimated 80 percent of the population lives in poverty and with such as high level of illiteracy, that these means would dominate campaigning. But at the same time I can’t believe how untechnical that is. I wonder, are any candidates using the internet or cell phones in their campaigns, and if not, why?

One reason could be that campaigning through technical means just might not reach enough people. According to Institute for Connectivity in the Americas, less than 6 percent of Haitians use the internet and less than 5 percent have a cell phone. (Check out the interactive map to compare countries' connectivity rates and other stats.) But even if a small minority of the population uses these types of technology, I’m still surprised more technical campaigning isn’t taking place.

Bolivia, the poorest country in South America, did use cell phone technology to an extent in their elections. People could send an SMS message with their ID number to the Electoral Court and be sent back their voting location. Eduardo, who got to see some campaigning firsthand in Cochabamba passed that information to me, and wrote on his blog that cell phones were the “lifeblood” of campaigns in a more typical way.

“The night that I met the Presidential candidate, he was operating with two different cell phones, one in each pocket (both rang at the same time non-stop).”

However, Bolivia doesn’t serve as a very good comparison to Haiti because cell phones are much more prevalent, with about 20 percent of the population having one. I wonder if it just does not serve the candidates to reach out to voters through more technical means because of the population’s access to it, or if there are other reasons involved. Of course, it’s always possible that detailed information from the ground in Haiti just isn’t making it into English language press.

If you hear of neat ways candidates in any country are using cell phones and the internet to attract voters, please pass them on.