Ushahid Report on Election Day  

Ushahid (www.u-shahid.org) is an online platform for recording reports from the public about the election process on a real-time map, through SMS, email and Twitter. 

Ushahid received on election day November 28, 2010 during voting period 1252 reports, documented with 287 videos and 111 images. The reports represented a wide variety of violations, which began the day before the election day. It is noteworthy that there was apparent patterns of violations repeating throughout Egypt, at the same time, which gave clear impression that those violations are systematic. Reports were classified as follows:

تقرير موقع يوشاهيد حول يوم الانتخابات

موقع يوشاهيد www.u-shahid.org هو منصة تفاعلية لتسجيل الشهادات الشعبية حيال العملية الانتخابية عن طريق الرسائل القصيرة أو البريد الالكتروني أو عن طريق شبكة التدوين المصغر تويتر.

تلقى موقع يوشاهيد في يوم الانتخاب 28 نوفمبر 2010 منذ فتح اللجان موعد فتح اللجان وحتى موعد غلقها 1252 شهادة مدعومة ب 287 مقطع فيديو و111 صورة تعكس مجموعة كبيرة ومتنوعة من الانتهاكات وتتضمن مجموعة من الانتهاكات التي بدأت في اليوم السابق على يوم الانتخاب. وكانت الملاحظة الجديرة بالذكر هو ورود تقارير تفيد حدوث نفس الانتهاكات بنفس الطريقة في عدد من الدوائر المختلفة في أنحاء مصر في نفس الوقت وهو ما أعطى انطباعا واضحا بنظامية ومنهجية تلك الانتهاكات. كانت التقارير مصنفة كالتالي:

Figure: Classification of reports during the voting period
 

134 cases of violence were reported on the site, whether between supporters of candidates—which reached the extent of opening fire— by unknown thugs or by candidates themselves. This happened in several constituencies. Several injuries resulted from live ammunition, reaching as high as 6 fatalities were reported on the site, while there was still conflicting information about the overall number by the end of election day. Reports pointed out the extensive presence of thugs in the streets, armed with knives and sticks, to attack voters, and destroying public properties. In Damietta, ballot boxes were burned in a move to protest ballot stuffing.  148 reports indicated security interferences, whether through detention and obstruction of some voters, observers, candidate delegates, or through closing down whole voting centers, fully or partly, which happened in 61 reports. Denying access for observers and candidate delegates was a common theme, as reported by 51 reports.  There were 116 reports of vote tempering events through ballot stuffing or switching or mutable voting. In addition, there were reports of widespread presence of stamped and official voting cards outside polling stations for the first time in many districts. Further, there were 51 reports of vote buying incidents which reached very high amounts, including incidents of visible monetary and other tangible bribes to the electoral employees inside polling stations. 
265 reports indicated the continuation of campaigning activities, including campaigning inside polling stations and even by some of the electoral employees and some of the government employees. In some of the main electoral centers, NDP campaigners were allowed to put laptops to publicize the party's candidates inside polling stations. 326 reports were classified as others, which ranged from cases of violence, bullying and harassment of voters, especially girls, clashes in firearms and bladed weapons, as well as reports of the detention journalists, including of Al-Jazeera cameraman and the Deputy Executive Director of the Human Rights Watch, and finally the prevention of media coverage, although many of them had permits to cover the elections.