How Text Messaging was used in the Tunisian Elections

This is an e-mail I received from one of my readers, under the cover of anonymity, reporting first hand on how text messaging was successfully used in the Tunisian elections.

Am contacting you hoping you will kindly accept to write a short post about the fact that SMS texting has been very massively used in the Tunisian elections, the elections has finished today (23 October) and it lasted 4 days, from 20 to 23 October).

The SMS texting was used by the citizens to consult where shall they vote, the service (made available with a cooperation between the governement and a private local company) was really a big success, here's some numbers:

-- More than 3 million SMS has been served on the 23rd of October, totalling around 6 million SMS in one day (assuming every SMS-MO has its response: SMS-MT)

-- 1 million SMS has been server on the 22nd of October

-- 700k SMS has been served from 20 to 21st of October

The service is very basic, people have to send SMS with this syntax:

bv ID_CODE LANGUAGE

Example: To know where one should vote, mobile users sent out an ID like this one: 'bv 67521266 F' to short code 1423, A reply was returned by SMS indicating the correct voting office (in french, if "F" was added at the end of the text).

The service was a real success, and tunisians estimate that there's a historical record of the participation percentage, we're talking about more than 87% of participation ..

Anyway, i thought it is interesting to write something on textually (am your reader since early 2006) to spread the word about SMS usage in elections and its success in the tunisian post-revolution and first 100% democratic elections.

emily | 6:34 PM | SMS and Politics |
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