With only days to go before Turkey’s Nov. 1 general elections, concerns of vote-rigging are again rife. Leading the effort to prevent fraud is a remarkable civic movement, Vote and Beyond, which has grown steadily in a short amount of time. The volunteers, who started out as a group of eight people in December 2013, became an association in April 2014. They have since become organized in half of Turkey’s 81 provinces, readying to watch the ballot boxes Nov. 1. The number of volunteers was expected to reach about 100,000 by election day.
Promoting the power of collective action, group members are reluctant to go under the spotlight individually and give interviews. The movement trains volunteers in the provinces and has developed its own software to cross-check the vote counts.
