Counteracting illicit behaviour during elections: The role of observers and cell phones in a field experiment
We assess different forms of voter education during an election in Mozambique.
African elections often reveal low levels of political accountability. We assess different forms of voter education during an election in Mozambique. Three interventions providing information to voters and calling for their electoral participation were randomized: an SMS-based information campaign, an SMS hotline for electoral misconduct, and the distribution of a free newspaper. To measure impact, we look at official electoral results, reports by electoral observers, behavioral and survey data. We find positive effects of all treatments on voter turnout. We observe that the distribution of the newspaper led to more accountability-based participation and to a decrease in electoral problems.
The data is available for download on the Harvard Dataverse. It is a mix of Stata amd Excel files, and contains a useful Readme.dox. The code file ‘codevoteduc.do’ is self-explanatory, as it indicates which parts of the code correspond to each set of results. Data files include variable labels. Running the code will produce some auxiliary data files (which can be disregarded after the code is run), as well as a set of xml files, which include all the results in the paper and the online appendix. It also includes an excel file with all graphs, corresponding data, and all tables in the paper and online appendix.