Azerbaijan makes it easy to observe elections via the Internet. So what?

I am not yet sure what to make of the radical transparency exhibited by the Azeri authorities: they are planning to install 500 webcams in 10% of the country’s constituencies to monitor the municipal elections and broadcast the events live over the Internet. About 500 webcams will be set at country’s constituencies in anticipation of ...

I am not yet sure what to make of the radical transparency exhibited by the Azeri authorities: they are planning to install 500 webcams in 10% of the country's constituencies to monitor the municipal elections and broadcast the events live over the Internet.

I am not yet sure what to make of the radical transparency exhibited by the Azeri authorities: they are planning to install 500 webcams in 10% of the country’s constituencies to monitor the municipal elections and broadcast the events live over the Internet.

About 500 webcams will be set at country’s constituencies in anticipation of municipal elections in Azerbaijan, CEC secretary Natik Mammadov said.

He noted that the country now accounts for 5000 constituencies. 10% of them will have webcams.

"This is a revolutionary decision and I would say few in the world apply this practice. The website of our commission will be available in every corner of the planet on the voting day and the voting process will be broadcast in live from 0700 till the time of closing", he said.

I don’t know how it would hurt, but I don’t see how it would help either: unless there are enough cameras to cover the entire voting/counting areas, rigging the results would still not be too hard. If anything, the presence of a Web cam would probably give yet another excuse to validate the results…

Evgeny Morozov is a fellow at the Open Society Institute and sits on the board of OSI's Information Program. He writes the Net Effect blog on ForeignPolicy.com

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