Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how cellular telephony and internet use have changed voting behavior and communication about politics in the Kenyan Presidential election scheduled for March, 2013.

Paper long abstract:

The 2007 Kenyan presidential election was marred by charges of rigging and vote fraud. The result was massive violence in Nairobi, and the Rift Valley, and to a lesser extent in Kisumu, resulting in nearly 2000 dead, and more than 200,000 displaced. The response to this by donors and the Government of Kenya (GoK) was to increase the use of technology in a bid to increase the reliability of voting outcomes. Several methods were tested during the 2010 Constitutional referendum to improve vote counting outcomes, including sending vote tallies by SMS, flying ballot boxes from polling stations to a central counting area, and improving voting registration procedures. An additional influence of technology was that political rumors, some of which were actually untrue, were sent via SMS, sometimes sparking protests and violence. To quell unrest, the Kenyan Government shut down live television coverage of the election for some time period in 2007. In other periods of social unrest, such as the Egyptian Revolution, and the "Walk to Work" campaign in Uganda, governments have successfully shut down cellular telephone service, or attempted to suspend Twitter. ICTs are likely to be implicated at multiple levels: 1) vote counting and vote verification 2) political rumors, 3) information about local violence and voting violations, using technologies such as Ushaidi, and 4) political organizing. The Kenyan state will have to make difficult decisions regarding freedom of speech which implicate technology. This paper will examine this watershed event in African politics from a legal, regulatory, political and technological standpoint.