Voluntary Organization Offers Live Coverage of İstanbul Election Results

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The Vote and Beyond (Oy ve Ötesi) is a voluntary organization that has been following the polls to ensure "transparent and accountable elections" since 2014 when the state-run Anadolu Agency (AA) became the sole entity to distribute live results to the media.

The organization has announced that it has launched a mobile application to gather data from election minutes and that it will post live updates from the "confirmed" minutes.

The AA's coverage of the İstanbul polls in the March 31 local elections was particularly controversial as it stopped updating data at around 11 p.m. when the opposition candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu began to catch his rival, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) candidate Binali Yıldırım.

It eventually declared İmamoğlu ahead, after a 13-hour silence. The AA figures initially showed Yıldırım got more than 60 percent of the votes, while the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) repeatedly ccontested the AA figures throughout the night. 

The "T3 Tutanak Gönder" application lets anyone who holds a duty at the election councils or not to send minutes to the Vote and Beyond. When three volunteers enter the same data for a minute, it will be counted as "confirmed" and will be published by the organization.

Saying that the more minutes it gets the more transparent the elections will become, the Vote and Beyond called people to send minutes to it on the election night.

The repeat elections will take place on June 23, after the Supreme Election Council (YSK) controversially canceled the March 31 polls, which İmamoğlu won by a margin of less than 14 thousand votes. (EMK/VK)