South African National election 2024 chatbot

13 Apr 2024 -

Overwhelmed by Choices in the 2024 National Elections?

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The 2024 National Elections in South Africa are set against a backdrop of rapid AI innovation and a surge in the capabilities of Large Language Models. This prompts an intriguing question: “Can AI help voters understand political parties and their manifestos?”

The Challenge:

Navigating the political landscape in South Africa can be daunting. According to the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), here’s a snapshot of the current political party landscape:

Party Registration Stats:

  • Deregistered: 801
  • Registered: 1,743
  • Rejected: 94

Levels of Registration:

  • National: 774
  • Municipal: 1,864

Even when narrowing down to parties that are both registered and national, voters still face a choice among 381 parties. Additionally, recent changes in electoral laws now permit independent candidates, further complicating the decision-making process. For the upcoming elections, the IEC lists 62 unique parties and 497 potential parliamentary candidates.

Given the wealth of options, the task for the average South African voter becomes even more challenging. Consider the plethora of manifestos, with page counts ranging significantly:

  • ACDP: 14 pages
  • ActionSA: 70 pages
  • AL-JAMAH: 7 pages
  • ANC: 58 pages
  • ATM: 52 pages
  • AZAPO: 37 pages
  • BOSA: 44 pages
  • COPE: 209 pages
  • DA: 53 pages
  • EFF: 260 pages
  • FF+: 48 pages
  • Good Party: 13 pages
  • IFP: 40 pages
  • MK Party: 24 pages
  • PAC: 26 pages
  • PA: 35 pages
  • Rise Mzansi: 68 pages
  • UDM: 26 pages

This volume of information makes it quite a task to just put a single X next to a party or independent candidate.

Language Problem

On top of the mass of information available in Manifestos and our government’s trove of IEC and publicly available information is a lack of translations into the rest of our other 11 official languages.

You would be surprised that the Freedom Front Plus party has manifestos in languages other than Afrikaans: Zulu Xhoza xitsonga

You would think parties like the ANC, DA, IFP, etc would have translated manifestos? How then are the majority of our nation reached on policy if manifestos are not available in their language?

A Possible Solution:

What if AI could assist in this daunting task? Open Source Large Language Models excel at summarizing large texts and delivering concise insights. This technological revolution, paralleled by a political evolution, could transform how voters engage with electoral options in South Africa.

To achieve this multiple manifestos, websites and news sites have been scraped to present this data. Over 1000 documents were ingested and gets retrieved to answer complex political or election questions.

This includes asking about IEC rules, regulations and news.

Ask questions, get comprehensive answers.

https://election.mzansi.ai/ is born out of experiment of creating conversational, informative and concise answers on a complex subject, in multiple languages.

It is important that public information is accessible and consumable by the public. Ask your questions without fear or favour. No personal information is gathered. Ask questions without disclosing your political affiliation, leanings or values. Inform yourself and get to know the many vibrant political actors participating in our 2024 national elections.

This is only possible through public information and knowledge we are aware of and gather. If we are missing anything please reach out to [email protected] or [email protected].

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