Photo by Governor Kate Brown/Flickr

Kate Brown
First elected openly LGBTQ governor

Kate Brown has been serving as Oregon’s governor since her successor resigned amid a corruption scandal in 2015. This week, she was elected by the state to serve the next two years of what would have been the rest of former governor John Kitzhaber’s term.

Brown – previously Oregon’s secretary of state and majority leader of the state Senate – is the first openly LGBTQ candidate to win a gubernatorial [related to a governor] election. She has been married to her husband since 1997, but was revealed to be bisexual years before that. She has since embraced her identity publicly, taking opportunities to speak about her sexuality.

“You can’t be what you can’t see,” she told the Washington Blade newspaper. “If I can be a role model for one young person that decides their life is worth living because there’s someone like them in the world, it’s worth it.”

Brown is also a survivor of domestic violence. She was vocal in criticising some of Donald Trump’s comments about women, which she said in the same interview were “re-traumatising” for her.

As governor, Brown has already invested into Oregon’s education budget and increased the minimum wage. Next, she hopes to introduce gun safety legislation – especially on campuses – increase high school graduation rates, and pass protections for LGBTQ people.

Photo by Cherie Cullen/Wikimedia Commons

Tammy Duckworth
First Thai American woman elected to Senate

Many believe that Tammy Duckworth has been making history for years. Elected to the US House of Representatives in 2013, she became the first female veteran, the first disabled woman, and the first Asian American woman to represent Illinois.

Born in Bangkok to a second world war veteran father and a Thai mother, Duckworth grew up in various places throughout Asia, where her father worked for the UN and numerous corporations. She moved to Hawaii at age 16, where she also attended college, before earning her master’s in Washington, D.C.

She joined the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps in 1990 and later served as a helicopter pilot. In 2004, Duckworth was deployed to Iraq, and lost both her legs after her helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. She has since advocated for veterans.

Each year, Duckworth and her former crewmates gather to celebrate their survival in the 2004 crash. “You can choose to spend the day of your injury in a dark room feeling sorry for yourself or you can choose to get together with the buddies who saved your life, and I choose the latter,” she told the Chicago Tribune.

In office, she has promised to fight for civil rights for LGBTQ people, protection of the Affordable Care Act, basic assistance for people facing poverty, and a reduction in gun violence.

Photo from Kamala Harris campaign website

Kamala Harris
First mixed race and Indian American woman elected to Senate

In 2010, Harris made history as the first female, first black, and first Asian American to be elected attorney general of California. Now, she will be the first Indian American and first biracial female senator.

Harris’ upbringing was a multicultural one. Born to an Indian mother and Jamaican father in California, she attended Howard University in Washington D.C. and received a law degree from the University of California.

Harris earned President Obama’s endorsement for the Senate, and was also speculated to be a potential replacement for US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, though she has said she had no interest in filling the position.

In an interview with the New York Times Magazine, Harris discussed racial discrimination among prosecutors, saying: “They were talking about how these young people were dressed, what corner they were hanging out on, and the music they were listening to. I remember saying: ‘Hey, guys, you know what? Members of my family dress that way. I grew up with people who live on that corner.’”

Harris has committed to making higher education more accessible and expanding voting rights. She is also expected to work toward improving the criminal justice system.

Photo by Joe Mabel/Flickr

Pramila Jayapal
First Indian American woman elected to the US House of Representatives

Soon representing Washington’s 7th congressional district, Pramila Jayapal is the first Indian American woman elected to US Congress. Born in India and raised in Indonesia and Singapore, she came to the United States at the age of 16 to attend Georgetown University in Washington D.C.

Jayapal has been involved in civil rights activism in and around Seattle for more than 20 years. She founded and served as executive director of pro-immigration advocacy group OneAmerica until 2012. In 2013, she was given the White House’s Champion of Change award.

She began her political career as a Democrat in 2014 when she ran for state Senate and won. After two years in state office, she decided to run for Congress and went on to a significant victory in the primary over her opponent, Democrat Brady Walkinshaw.

Jayapal’s progressive beliefs align with Bernie Sanders, who endorsed her in April. In a statement addressing the ‘one per cent’, Jayapal said: “What Congress needs is a progressive voice who is unafraid to take on these powerful interests.”

Photo from Catherine Cortez Masto campaign website

Catherine Cortez Masto
First Latina woman elected to Senate and first female senator from Nevada

Catherine Cortez Masto is both the first Latina woman and woman to enter the Senate from Nevada. The granddaughter of a Mexican immigrant, Cortez Masto was born and raised in the state.

Before being elected as Democratic senator, she served two terms as attorney general, during which she worked to provide financial aid for students and strengthen laws preventing sex trafficking.

“My grandfather came from Mexico for the very reason that many other families have come here, which is an opportunity to succeed, to make sure your kids have more than what you had,” she told news platform Mother Jones. “Because of his hard work and courage and the hard work of my parents, my sister and I are the first to graduate from college. That, to me, is the American Dream.”

As senator, she has said she will work to protect access to Medicare and Social Security, raise the minimum wage, and craft comprehensive immigration reform.

Photo by Lorie Shaull/Wikimedia Commons

Ilhan Omar
First Somali American Muslim woman elected to state legislature

Ilhan Omar is the first Somali American woman to be elected to public office in the US. After fleeing the Somali civil war with her family aged eight in the early 1990s, Omar spent the next four years in a Kenyan refugee camp.

In 1995, Omar’s family arrived in Virginia and eventually resettled in Minneapolis, home to the nation’s largest population with Somali ancestry. She studied political science and international studies at North Dakota State University.

Omar has worked at the Minnesota Department of Education and as a senior policy aide for a Minneapolis senior council member. In August, she beat a 22-term incumbent by more than 10 per cent of the primary vote.

She has said she believes it is time leaders of her district truly represent the community’s diverse history, one that includes immigration. But her success hasn’t come from just popularity among Somalis.

“That ability to create connections with people who don’t look like me, who don’t share my identities, has sort of been the success of my campaign,” she told the digital media company Refinery29.

In office, Omar is expected to focus on closing the opportunity gap by supporting universal pre-kindergarten access, hiring more teachers of colour, and fighting for better rights for immigrants and LGBTQ people. She is also committed to making higher education more affordable and ensuring clean air and water.

This article was originally published in Yes! Magazine.

The post 6 women who made history in the US election appeared first on Positive News.

Nigeria’s elections, which were scheduled for 14 February, have been postponed for six weeks with the government citing security concerns posed by insurgent group Boko Haram. But civil society groups have criticised incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan for using the group’s attacks as a pretext to halt the electoral process. Pre-election polls suggest his centre-right Peoples Democratic Party was facing defeat by the All Progressives Congress, a social democratic party led by Nigeria’s former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari.

One organisation condemning the postponement is the Transition Monitoring Group (TMG), a Nigerian election observation organisation. We spoke to Armsfree Onomo, TMG’s media manager, about the science of elections, and the role mobile technology can play in monitoring due process.

Aamna Mohdin: What’s the history of TMG in Nigeria?

Armsfree Onomo: TMG was established as a coalition of civil society organisations in 1998. At that time, the military was in charge of transitioning to civil rule after three decades of dictatorship. The same civil society organisations had been at the vanguard of the struggle against the military. There was a need to keep an eye on the democratic process. It was only logical that, as democracy was sprouting, the very actors who fought to bring it to reality should also be engaged in nurturing it.

Is there a movement in Nigeria to make elections fairer and more credible?

Yes, especially after the general elections of 2007, which were blighted by large-scale irregularities and fraud. This push for transparent polls got a boost from the Occupy Nigeria movement that convulsed the nation after fuel subsidies were removed in January 2012.

“The Quick Count approach contrasts sharply with traditional observation methods, where observers have no rigorous yardstick.”

The electoral architecture still puts an enormous amount of power in the hands of the ruling party when it comes to appointing electoral overseers. Then the election management bodies of Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) have to wait on a partisan executive for funds to carry out operations. So there is still a lot to be done to ensure the electoral system is fair to all parties.

Other than TMG, what organisations exist to verify election results?

No other organisation has the technical capacity to verify the official results of elections in Nigeria. The Quick Count method was first used by the INEC in 2011 to observe and verify the 2011 elections. Several state governorship elections have also used Quick Count.

What is Quick Count and how does it work?

Quick Count, also known as parallel vote tabulation, is a scientific method for observing elections using nonpartisan citizen observers, who are deployed to a representative, random sample of polling stations. The observers report via coded text messages to the government’s National Information Centre, where data is analysed by trained statisticians.

The highly trained observers witness election day processes, such as poll officials’ arrivals, accreditation, vote sorting, counting and the announcement of results. There are Quick Count observers across all of Nigeria’s 774 local government areas. However, this does not mean we are present at all of the polling stations.

How does mobile technology help with this?

Quick Count is where information technology and statistics meet. The citizen observers supply a representative random sample of data. From this sample, estimates of voting behaviour are drawn and compared with the official results. Mobile technology is a crucial aspect. The observers in the field send coded text messages so a third party would not be able to understand what is being done. This helps guarantee the safety of the observer. It also conveys the data in a neat way.

The Quick Count approach contrasts sharply with traditional observation methods, where observers have no rigorous yardstick. Without such yardsticks, it is possible for the traditional observer to rove through several polling stations on election day because there are no demands for rigour and precision. With Quick Count, however, observers do not rove; they spend the whole of election day at their assigned polling station.

Quick Count was first used in the Philippines in 1986 to stave off the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. Since then, it has been widely used in different parts of the world, including Malawi, Kenya, Ghana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and, more recently, in the Tunisian general elections.

Have you been monitoring the election build up?

In the past, Quick Count data showed the vote share of the political parties, polling station opening times and voter accreditation. In 2015, we will also observe the pre-election period so we can provide an early warning to help prevent violence.

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We will send observers to each of the 774 local government areas to monitor a range of issues. Observers will use a pre-election checklist to answer a set of questions. They will then send the answers via coded text messages to the database, from where the analysis is done. Recommendations are then made to push for long-term electoral reforms. Reports from our local partners have so far raised several issues, such as hate speech, vandalism, migration and population movements, and voter card buying and selling.

What is the biggest challenge you will face on election day?

Ensuring effective coordination of observers so that they are in their pre-assigned polling stations in time for observation. It creates huge problems if they don’t get there in time.

Do you think the Quick Count approach is effective at reducing corrupt practices?

This method is effective as it places a second eye on the electoral process through the observers. Officers of INEC, including its chairman Attahiru Jega, have praised TMG for the introduction of this methodology, which they say has helped keep them on their toes.

What methods do you use to inform the public?

We have been using traditional and social media to spread the messages of our civic education drive. Radio has been particularly instrumental in pushing TMG messages to a broad variety of audiences. Our Quick Count Half Hour, a radio broadcast on Radio Nigeria, reaches audiences across the country.

Where do you hope TMG will go in the future?

We hope to achieve bigger milestones in deepening democracy in Nigeria. There is still a lot of impunity in the Nigerian system. We hope to be able to have a better electoral system so that there will be democratic accountability throughout the electoral process. We also want to build capacity and get to a point where TMG’s local partners will be strong enough to cascade what we are doing at the national level to the local levels.

First published by SciDev

The post Science supports integrity in Nigerian elections appeared first on Positive News.