Since the launch of Vote or Quench, we’ve been met with doubt and the most obvious question: “Why should I vote? My vote won’t be counted!” The question makes sense, afterall, the last election held, had voters registered by the names of Michael Jackson, and James Brown.

Luckily we’ve stumbled upon a little thing called technology. With the emergence of cell phones in Africa a number of African countries including Senegal, and most recently Guinea have used cell phones to monitor elections. From the polling stations, to the counting of votes, volunteers have managed to send out quick messages and alerts on the happenings at each polling station.

With 27% percent of Nigeria’s population (i.e. 40 million people) with access to cell phones, monitoring our upcoming elections has created a new dynamic. The power to monitor voting has been placed back in the hands of the people, closing up opportunities for election rigging.

The technology was used by Network of Mobile Election Monitors (NMEM) in our 2007 elections, which was declared to be fraudulent. However, if a push is made by combining cell phone technology with the global power of social media networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Naijapulse, we stand the chance of create an impossibly loud racket, louder than the defiant protests of Iranians during their last election.

To read more on the power of cell phones in monitoring elections check out this CNN article.