1. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Faye Anderson
(215) 995-5028
@andersonatlarge
Yo! Philly Votes Mapped Election Day in Philadelphia
Ushahidi-powered Platform Named ‘Map of the Week’
Philadelphia, PA – November 7, 2012 – On Election Day 2012, Yo! Philly Votes aggregated
and mapped real-time incident reports. The crowdsourced election protection initiative was the
only successful U.S. deployment of the Ushahidi-powered platform during the general election.
(Yo! Philly Votes Logo)
“Yo! Philly Votes received hundreds of messages and 1780 pageviews,” said Faye Anderson,
project manager of the citizen-led initiative. “Our reporters included members of the A. Philip
Randolph Institute, Black Youth Vote, Foot Soldiers for Democracy and the Philadelphia
Coalition on Black Civic Participation. When they saw something, they said something via
Twitter, text message, YouTube and email.”
Anderson added: “We are particularly excited by the participation of Millennials (18 to 29 year
olds), who are more likely to tweet a problem than call a hotline. We engaged young people
where they are and empowered them to protect the vote.”
About Yo! Philly Votes: Yo! Philly Votes was named “Map of the Week” by the Philadelphia
Public Interest Information Network. The citizen-led initiative, which stems from Random Hacks
of Kindness, promotes data-driven models of accountability in election administration. The
project received support from The Knight Foundation Donor-Advised Fund of The Philadelphia
Foundation. For more information, please visit www.PhillyVotes.info.
About Ushahidi: “Ushahidi,” which means “testimony” in Swahili, was a website that was
developed to map reports of post-election violence in Kenya in 2008. Today, Ushahidi is a non-
profit tech company that specializes in developing free and open source software for
information collection, visualization and interactive mapping. The company builds tools for
democratizing information, increasing transparency and lowering the barriers for individuals to
share their stories. For more information, please visit www.Ushahidi.com.
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