Arena Electoral

Arena electoral
Type of site
 Online Platform
Headquarters Mexico City, Mexico
Founder(s) Fundación Ethos
Website http://www.arenaelectoral.com
Current status Active

Arena Electoral was an online platform created by Fundación Ethos during the Mexican electoral process of 2012 to promote responsible voting.[1] The project did this by simulating an online competition in which all four presidential candidates: Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Enrique Peña Nieto, Josefina Vázquez Mota, and Gabriel Quadri, were given certain topics based on the Mexican national agenda and had to come up with a solution. After the candidates published their policies, the platform unanimously published them on their website and Mexican citizens were in charge of voting for what they believed was the best policy.[2] Presumably, the goal of the platform was to allow Mexican citizens to vote for the policymaker that shared the same ideas as them instead of voting for a candidate based on party affiliations or other types of bias.[3]

Background

The software was developed and designed by a much larger organization known as Fundación Ethos and supported by the United Nations Population Fund and by National Endowment for Democracy (NED) of the United States.[4] Fundación Ethos is an international group of economists, lawyers, communicators, web designers, and political scientists, all who have experience in government and policymaking.[5] However, with its headquarters located in Mexico City, the organization mainly works to achieve its goals first in Mexico and Latin America.[6]

Software

Arena Electoral 2.0 as it is currently known was developed and produced under Fundación Ethos. The project was both an online platform and cellular application, with its online form still accessible.[7]

Funding

The platform was created by a non-profit, independent and non-partisan organization that is financed by contributions from individuals and international organizations, with short contributions. Arena Electoral states that they do not provide any product in exchange for their services, do not give or sell pantries, hats, shirts or pictures for your car. They do not sell or give anything away, although they have considered selling t-shirts with their logo printed on them, for now, nothing is sold on their site.[1]

Principles

On its webpage, Arena Electoral lists nine main principles in which they presumably aimed to follow and keep in order to have remained as neutral as possible. Their first principle and notice are that they were not in the business of giving out/selling items, pantries, hats, shirts or pictures for your car. Their second principle is in regards to advertising. Arena Electoral state that they did advertise on their site, but according to them it was only used as a necessity to pay for their "discrete" salaries. However, according to them they did not accept (nor will we ever accept) money or resources from candidates or companies that intentioned to modify Arena Electoral's opinions, analyzes, or evaluations based on their donations. Furthermore, in their third principle Arena Electoral address and talk about their allies. They claim that fortunately, there were many organizations allied to the platform. There were some partners who they previously had collaborated with and others who they state they only sympathized with. Arena Electoral say that they even got to know partners as well as a result of the platform, which accordingly allowed them to inform and spread their proposals. At the end of the section Arena Electoral make a disclaimer saying that the information that their partners decided to share in their platform was generated independently without the intervention of their own team or any of the other organizations that participated in the project, and as a result claimed that everyone was free and responsible to propose anything on the site. Furthermore, Arena Electoral's fourth principle titled "APPARATUS" claims that they were 100% nonpartisan and independent of any candidate or party. They claim that no member of their team was allowed to participate directly in the campaign of any of the candidates they evaluated on the platform. Their fifth principles are in regards to conduct. Arena Electoral clearly state that they did not accept gifts from any of the candidates or their people. Their sixth principle addresses media. They acknowledge that some of their members appeared on television to give opinions, but that they were independent of the project since they were only spokespersons of Arena Electoral when they presented themselves as such. Nonetheless, their following principle is titled "CONFLICT OF INTERESTS." In this section, they state that any member of the Arena Electoral team who had a husband or wife, boyfriend or girlfriend, partner or a close relationship with a candidate, or member of their team, was known on their personal information. In the following section (eighth principle), Arena Electoral address the opinions that were shared or published on the site. They presumably claim that any opinions or editorialized material that was on the platform were made explicit. That is, they claim that any opinion that appeared on the platform was the sole opinion of that person and should not have been considered a formal opinion supported by Arena Electoral as a whole or its associates in particular. The ninth and final principle that Arena Electoral aimed to implement on their platform was the use of the page. In this final section the platform claim that users of the page were invited to make good use of it. Arena Electoral state that any forums that were disrespectful, aggressive, insulting and used words that did not dignify the debate and democratic deliberation was eliminated. In other words, Arena Electoral claim that they did not permit any type of harassment of unethical behavior on the platform.[8]

Mission

The main goal of Arena Electoral was to promote responsible voting. They aimed to achieve this by making citizens aware on which candidate was the most fitting policy maker in accordance with their own ideas.[9]

Safe-space for Citizens to communicate to each other

Arena Electoral also aimed to be a platform for citizens to express and publish their own opinions without having to worry about party or candidate affiliations. In other words, the platform was also aimed to be a safe-space for citizens according to Arena Electoral.[10]

Promote responsible voting

In order to promote responsible voting, Arena electoral created a tool within their platform called Votomático. Votomático was a questionnaire containing 25 questions, all based on five major themes: security and justice; economic development; social development and the environment; human rights and State Reform, and Foreign Policy. The results were anonymous unless you chose to share them on social media.[11] The questionnaire in Votomático was multiple choice and each question had five different answers. From those five answers, you picked the one that most likely matched your way of thinking. After answering every question, according to Arena Electoral, the exercise would show which candidate you have the most affinity with.[12] With Votomático Arena Electoral aimed to show citizens with which of the four presidential candidates they were more inclined to. However, according to Fundación Ethos, the tool was not created to induce suffrage in favor of a specific candidate and/or political party. Instead, presumably Votomático was developed so citizens could know the proposals of the candidates and from that identify with whom they shared similar ideas.[10]

How It Works

The way Arena Electoral functioned was that the four presidential candidates received questions based on eleven topics regarding the national agenda.[13] The topics were as followed:

  1. Health
  2. Education
  3. Science and Technology
  4. Culture
  5. Human rights
  6. Economic Development
  7. Sustainable Development
  8. Social Improvement
  9. Security and Justice
  10. Foreign Policy
  11. State Reforms

After giving their proposals on the topic, the candidates were then evaluated by more than 200 experts including academics from both public and private universities.[14] The evaluators according to Arena Electoral, scored the candidates based on their responsibility, viability, feasibility, all while withholding the platform's principles and aspirations.[15]

Results

The final result showed Andrés Manuel López Obrador as the winner with 5.7. Enrique Peña Nieto, the current president of Mexico came in second with 5.2. Consequently, Josefina Vázquez Mota came in third with 4.4 and with the lowest score came in Gabriel Quadric with 2.8.[16]

Legacy

Currently, Arena Electoral is still up and running and now serves as an informative site that still, according to them, aims to explain to citizens the power of voting and its importance, all while guiding in what is needed to express this right in Mexico or abroad. Nonetheless, the site still contains all previous articles, editorials, related texts and past proposals of the previous candidates.[17]

References

  1. 1 2 "Bienvenidos". Arena Electoral. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
  2. ↑ "Con esta herramienta, descubre con cuál candidato eres más afín". Vanguardia (in Spanish). Retrieved 2018-04-03.
  3. ↑ "arena electoral | Letras Libres". Letras Libres (in Spanish). Retrieved 2018-03-24.
  4. ↑ "Social networks, digital media revolutionize Mexican electoral coverage". Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas. Retrieved 2018-04-24.
  5. ↑ "Nosotros - ETHOS". ETHOS (in Spanish). Retrieved 2018-04-03.
  6. ↑ "Fundación Ethos | Groups | International Budget Partnership". International Budget Partnership. Retrieved 2018-04-03.
  7. ↑ "Once aplicaciones para seguir las elecciones". Infobae (in Spanish). Retrieved 2018-04-24.
  8. ↑ "Bienvenidos". Arena Electoral. Retrieved 2018-04-24.
  9. ↑ Intolerancia, Redacción. "Internet ayuda a transparentar elecciones". intoleranciadiario.com. Retrieved 2018-04-24.
  10. 1 2 "¿Con cuál candidato eres más afín? Descúbrelo con una herramienta de Arena Electoral | Animal Político". www.animalpolitico.com (in Spanish). Retrieved 2018-04-23.
  11. ↑ "Con esta herramienta, descubre con cuál candidato eres más afín". Vanguardia (in Spanish). Retrieved 2018-04-24.
  12. ↑ "¿Ya sabes por quién votar? - Chilango". Chilango (in Spanish). 2012-06-25. Retrieved 2018-04-24.
  13. ↑ "PRESIDENCIABLES REPRUEBAN EN SUS PLATAFORMAS ELECTORALES: ARENA ELECTORAL". La Nigua (in Spanish). 2012-06-27. Retrieved 2018-04-24.
  14. ↑ "Totalmente planchada la negociación…en el SNTE: Marco Antonio García Limón, excelente columnista de la fuente educativa en Puebla". Búscanos en www.noticiasenpuebla.com y mensaje a noticiasenpuebla@gmail.com, noticiaspuebla1@hotmail.com o juliomartinez@noticiasenpuebla.com‏ (in Spanish). 2012-06-27. Retrieved 2018-04-24.
  15. ↑ "Esta es la Arena Electoral | Animal Político". www.animalpolitico.com (in Spanish). Retrieved 2018-04-24.
  16. ↑ "Participación Ciudadana importa muy poco a presidenciables: Arena Electoral | Animal Político". www.animalpolitico.com (in Spanish). Retrieved 2018-04-21.
  17. ↑ "'Apps' para descargar en temporada de elecciones". Expansión (in Spanish). Retrieved 2018-04-21.
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