The Commission of Elections (COMELEC) and Twitter announced their partnership to enable more Filipino voters to get live access to political information, to interact with top election candidates, and to express their views about the election process via Tweets, Vines and Periscopes. This partnership will empower the Philippines to have its own #TwitterElection this year, similar to the national elections in India and Indonesia in 2014.
To launch the partnership in Manila, COMELEC Chairman Juan Andres Bautista and Rishi Jaitly, Twitter’s Vice President of Media, Asia Pacific and Middle East, Tweeted from the commission’s official Twitter account @COMELEC:
This #TwitterElection partnership includes three key elements:
- Content Discovery: Twitter will share real-time data, visualizations and analytics to COMELEC and its broadcast/media partners during the Presidential and Vice Presidential debates. The Tweet-powered insights will bring the most interesting voter-powered topics and content related to the elections to enhance the live debate experience, off and on Twitter.
- Human Connection: COMELEC will use Twitter to crowd-source input from Filipino voters to inform the discussion topics and ask questions in real-time to the candidates during the on-air TV debates. Citizens can Tweet their comments and questions using #PilipinasDebate2016 hashtag to have a live connection with the candidates and debates through Twitter.
- Self-Expression: Citizens can have their voices heard by Tweeting live reports of any election campaigning irregularities and voting issues. COMELEC will use a Tweet-powered dashboard to monitor the real-time citizen reports, aggregate the data, and take appropriate actions to respond to the reports on Twitter and in the real world.
Chairman Bautista said, “Our first-ever partnership with Twitter will enhance our agency’s ability to leverage the power of social media to improve the democratic process for all our citizens in the Philippines and around the world. We look forward to working with Twitter to make the Presidential debates more accessible to millions of Filipinos, and, on a larger scale, to increase voter participation and political transparency throughout the Presidential Election this year.”
Mr. Jaitly said, “Being on Twitter is like having a front row seat to the Presidential Election, it’s the best place to go to get live updates of political campaigns and publicly connect with candidates, while giving every Filipino a voice to be heard during the election. We’re proud to partner with COMELEC to make this the first truly Twitter Election for Filipinos and enable more People Power to discuss, debate and choose the next government of the Philippines.”
Filipino citizens can join the elections-related conversation by following @COMELEC (https://twitter.com/comelec) or Tweeting and searching on Twitter using the #PilipinasDebate2016 hashtag. The public may also view all crowd-sourced debate questions and comments via Tweets by visiting http://www.electionsphl.com/pilipinasdebates.
