Elections and democracy

I am a bit obsessed with elections and democratic processes, and my favourite projects in the past few years have involved using data and transparency to try make them work better. Here is some of my writing which has resulted from these projects

Open Elections Burkina

In 2015 I helped set up a project in Burkina Faso that allowed for real time election results to be shared publicly for the first time, in the country’s first democratic elections in 30 years. I wrote about it in The Guardian, and spoke about it to SciDevNet on their podcast

Guide for election commissions for International Idea

In 2016 I authored a guide for election commissions on using open data to improve election processes

Data journalism on Brexit campaign finance

In 2017 worked with Guardian journalists on a piece of data journalism investigating financing of the Brexit campaign.

Transparent Referendum Initiative, Ireland abortion vote #8thref

In 2018 I set up and ran a project to bring transparency to online advertising in Ireland’s referendum on the 8th amendment which banned abortion. That project – the Transparent Referendum Initiative – led to a change in policy by Facebook and Google, and prompted commitments by the Irish Government to reform electoral regulations.

My writing / video / audio

• OpEd for Time Magazine: Google and Facebook Are Swaying Ireland’s Abortion Referendum Even When They Tried Not To
• OpEd for Irish Times: Social media ads must not be used to subvert abortion referendum
• Article for The Times: Unregulated online campaigning is bad for democracy
• Listen on the Irish Time Politics Podcast here and here
• Watch appearances on CNN, Australia’s ABC and Channel 4 News
• Watch a keynote I gave on the project at Re:Publica Berlin in May 2018