MojIzbor.mk is a platform that aims at transparent and objective monitoring of the elections in the Republic of North Macedonia.

The issue of elections is basically a matter of good governance and participation. Candidates and political parties prepare and present an offer to the citizens with their ideas and plans for running the local self-government units.

In this regard, it is necessary to raise the standards in the exercise of power, to increase the responsibility and accountability of institutions and to improve the involvement and influence of civil society in the decision-making process.

The aim of the project is to provide citizens with a different, neutral view of the elections and election campaigns.

All products were posted simultaneously on the website, social media: Facebook and Twitter, and some on linkedin. Summarized information will be sent to the contacts from our mailing list, and it will be sent as press releases to national and local traditional and new media, etc.

The activities last about 3 months, starting with the announcement of the elections, and ending with the review of fulfillment of all obligations from the SEC schedule (submission of financial reports, etc.)

It depended on the conducted activities, yet it goes without saying that we need people with good knowledge of data display and processing programs, who have research skills and who will collect and analyze data.

Of course, there is a need for a designer/someone with experience in design platforms/visualization of the collected data, who will prepare the posts in a way that is understandable to a wider audience, as well as web and social media specialists who will publish the information.

Preparing this type of analyses is by no means easy, and it is all the more difficult when the resources available are limited. Besides the fact that financial and human resources are limited, what further impedes the process is the fact that not all data are publicly available, and those that are available are not available in an open format.

So, in order to get a piece of information via the route of information of public character, you have to wait for about 15 days, and the information that you will receive is not processable. In such conditions, time as a resource becomes very limited and inefficiently used, because the few people who are available spend a lot of time collecting and processing data, in order to have it in open format so that it can be used for analysis.

Citizens were better informed about the election process and were able to compare the promises made by candidates and parties in key areas such as education, environment, social policy and the like.

They received more information about the profiles and activities of the candidates and the parties, as well as data on their ownership/property status. They also had the opportunity to read analyses of public opinion and ratings of candidates and political parties, to find out the results of the elections, the number of seats won, the turnout, the distribution by parties, gender and so on.

During the project, the posts were targeted at the relevant audience and we noticed more activity on the website and social media. More importantly, however, is that some of our announcements/infographics/analyses were shared via local and national media and made available through news aggregators, so even those citizens who did not follow our activities or did not have access to social media received balanced information about elections and the electoral process.

Mojizbor.mk is a project of the Macedonian Center for International Cooperation (MCIC).

MCIC is a civil society organization founded in 1993. The vision of MCIC is peace, harmony and prosperity of the people in Macedonia, the Balkans and globally. MCIC cooperates with civil society organizations and other stakeholders in society to achieve its vision and goals. To effectively influence public policies, MCIC works on research and analyses, to base its actions on facts and promote well-supported debates.

There are several organizations that observe the elections and publish information related to them, such as MOST and Civil. Furthermore, IDSCS regularly prepares and publishes election manuals and there are other organizations that follow different segments of the elections.

We will prepare and share information and analyses related to the early parliamentary elections scheduled for April 12, 2020. Hence, we plan to publish analysis of (non) fulfillment of the promises from the last elections, overview of the candidates for MPs, as well as their gender, age and educational background. How many of the candidates were/are in office, what are the promises of the parties in key areas, the course of the election campaign, etc.