INEC Election Monitoring Bot – Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Do I need to go out and vote?
A: YES, please make sure you go out and vote on election day. The data you send to us will not be used by INEC to determine the outcome of the elections. So you MUST go out and vote.
Q: What data do I need to send to the WhatsApp bot?
A: Please send the final results from your polling unit.
Q: How will I know the final results from my polling unit?
A: When election is over, the INEC officials at your polling unit will count all the votes and announce the results in front of everybody. Please note down these results and send them to us.
Q: How do I send you the results?
A: Please send a message (any message) by WhatsApp to +1234 901 3331 and answer the questions that the bot will ask you.
Q: I have sent a WhatsApp message to the bot, but I don’t know the name of my Ward and Polling Unit
A: You can find your Ward and Polling Unit on your PVC
Look at your voter’s card and look for the field called DELIM. The first part is your STATE, the second part is your LGA, the third part is your Ward. In the example PVC shown here, the voter’s state is LAGOS, the LGA is ETI OSA, and the ward is VICTORIA ISLAND II.
To find the Polling Unit, look at the code, just above the picture. The last 3 digits is the reference for your polling unit. When the bot asks you for your polling unit, just enter this number. In this example, the polling unit is 70
Q: I sent a message to the bot, but I did not get a response
A: Sometimes, due to internet connectivity, the bot might be slow to respond. However, most responses should happen within one minute.
Q: How do you verify if the results which people send to you are genuine?
A: We depend on the law of large numbers i.e. if lots of people send in their results, then we can assume that the results are representative of the reality. Also, if lots of people send in their results, then it makes it easy for us to spot insincere people who send in anomalous results. We can also see the phone numbers of people who send in results, so if someone is trying to send in multiple fake results, we will be able to identify and eliminate those results from the analysis.
Remember, none of what we are doing is the official results. We are only trying to understand what the electorate say they did, from the electorate themselves.
Q: How can I support this project
A: We have set up a gofundme account where you can donate money to keep the project running. We need to pay for hosting our application, servers, databases etc
Q: How
