Final Report: Cellular Monitoring: Improving Governance in Afghanistan

The project was conducted in 471 polling centers across Afghanistan during the 2010 parliamentary elections. A randomized control trial design was employed, where half of the polling centers received a letter announcing that a researcher would be taking a picture of the vote tally the next day, while the other half did not receive the letter. The project's implementation involved training and deploying hundreds of Afghans to 19 provincial capitals, acquiring and distributing hundreds of digital phones, and finding a collaborating partner with the necessary skills to manage the program. Despite initial challenges, the project was successfully implemented with a robust scientific research design, and data were collected from the digital cameras, translated, and analyzed. The project's findings revealed that the intervention reduced vote counts by 25% for the candidate most likely to be buying votes and reduced the stealing of election materials by about 60%. Additionally, the study found that strong political candidates reacted to the intervention by substituting fraud spatially, while weak candidates reacted by substituting temporally. The results were explained in the context of a theory of corrupt vote transactions, where the capacity of candidates to protect corrupt officials from prosecution determines equilibrium levels of spatial and temporal substitution. The project's success was attributed to the implementation of a robust scientific research design, the training and deployment of Afghan researchers, and the collection and analysis of data from the digital cameras. The project's findings have significant implications for improving electoral integrity in developing countries, particularly in the context of weak electoral institutions. The project's impact was measured through the reduction in vote counts and the stealing of election materials. The study's findings suggest that the intervention was effective in reducing electoral fraud, particularly for strong political candidates. The results also highlight the importance of considering the role of corrupt institutions in facilitating election fraud. The project's methodology involved a randomized control trial design, where half of the polling centers received a letter announcing that a researcher would be taking a picture of the vote tally the next day. The data were collected from the digital cameras, translated, and analyzed to determine the impact of the intervention. The project's findings have significant implications for improving electoral integrity in developing countries. The study's results suggest that the implementation of monitoring technologies, such as Quick Count Photo Capture, can be an effective way to reduce electoral fraud. The project's success also highlights the importance of considering the role of corrupt institutions in facilitating election fraud. The project's methodology involved a randomized control trial design, where half of the polling centers received a letter announcing that a researcher would be taking a picture of the vote tally the next day. The data were collected from the digital cameras, translated, and analyzed to determine the impact of the intervention. The study's findings suggest that the implementation of monitoring technologies, such as Quick Count Photo Capture, can be an effective way to reduce electoral fraud.