Tomorrow morning Afghanistan voters will go to the polls to select a new President and representatives to Provincial Councils. Today, with the help of partners in Afghanistan and abroad, we’re launching a simple tool called Votehere.af to enable Afghan voters to find their closest polling center.

Votehere.af is a mapping tool that direct voters to their nearest open polling center. It’s optimized for mobile phones and can easily be embedded on a Facebook page or another website. We made it easy to use and share to increase the number of people who might benefit.

Navigating to the polls

Aghanistan’s Independent Election Commission (IEC) closed 748 polling centers (10%) over concerns about violence and fraud — 352 of these closed stations were announced earlier this week. At the same time, the IEC removed the map of polling stations from its website. A final list of polling stations was only just published. Many voters will travel significant distances to reach a polling center and will accept real risk to do so. Votehere.af provides voters accurate and accessbile information about the open and closed polling centers in their area.

Built on Open Data

Votehere.af was quickly created and distributed by a collection of concerned developers and organizations in Afghanistan and internationally, including Impassion Afghanistan and members of Lamba Labs. Votehere.af is possible because of open data. We drew down data from the IEC website and made it open and accessible. Even while the IEC map was down, and international group of developers could build Votehere.af in parallel.

Help Share

Please join us in sharing Votehere.af with voters in Afghanistan. Instructions to embed the site are on the about page. Let use know if you have any suggestions to improve the tool.