Learning from Friends of Earth campaigns

Last Friday, the students of “Critical Issues in Campaigning” visited Friends of Earth to speak with Paul Steedman. Some of the issues highlighted by him during the meeting are helpful in the analysis of the “You Poll-Watcher”, a campaign that has been monitored by this blog.

One of the first issues pointed out by Paul Steedman was the fact that people are getting more and more sceptical about the possibility of influencing politicians. Therefore, according to him, it is important to offer opportunities to people do something. In this sense, empowerment is a really good campaigning tactic.

As seen in the last post, the “You Poll-Watcher” invites voters, at the end time of the Election Day, to take pictures of the electronic ballot boxes’ extracts and send them to the You Poll-Watcher’s team. The purpose is to verify the official result of the election.

Infographic adapted from www.facebook.com/vocefiscal

This means that the voters are encouraged to participate actively. If the campaign’s approach was, for example, stimulate people to protest, probably the mobilization would not be as big as it has been:

•           20,056 likes on Facebook

•           104,875 views on Youtube

•           12,500 app downloads

•           15,000 ballot boxes' extracts collected

Nevertheless, a great number of extracts of ballot boxes does not mean necessarily a good sample and, for this reason, the final verification may be not possible. Anyway, as Paul Steedman highlighted during the meeting, the main issue about campaigning is change the rules. In this sense, it seems fair to say that the real purpose of this campaign is to make people think about the accountability of Brazilian Elections and, at the same time, offer an alternative for the current electronic vote procedure.

Since 1996, Brazilian Elections are exclusively electronic and there is no physical register of the votes. The campaign suggests a hybrid system, in which the voter, after registry his electronic vote, print an extract and deposit it inside a traditional ballot box. Therefore, in case of controversy, it would be possible to recount the votes.

In order to contribute for such big change, the campaign needs to keep its momentum. As Paul Steedman said, campaigning require creativity and a strong understand about political power. Does the “You Poll-Watcher” have these characteristics?