RIYADH: Nearly two million people around the world visited the Saudi municipal elections’ website during the election period, the Saudi Press Agency reported.
The elections, whose results were announced recently, made use of the latest forms of technology to facilitate the electoral process.
The announcement of results included detailed percentages, allowing voters and candidates to view all personal information, as well as data about the district in which they voted and the name and number of candidates in each district.
The electronic service for the elections also provide access to a map showing the different electoral centers to which the voter should go on voting day, in addition to a short instructional video that provided information about how to enter the electoral center, vote and exit.
The use of technology in this round of the municipal elections helped facilitate access to electoral information by both voter and candidates from any location worldwide, and opened new avenues to communicate with them, be it through the official website, the Intekhab application on smartphones, voice and text messages, or instructional videos on YouTube.
The municipal election website, www.intekhab.gov.sa, received up to 1,792,285 visits to obtain information about candidates and election regulations, and to update information.
Statistics reveal that 85 percent of the website’s visitors were men, while only 15 percent were women.
Meanwhile 1,452,494 people relied on the smartphone application Intekhab, both on Android and Apple devices.
Age was an important factor in reliance of technology as those between the ages of 18 and 44 represented 80 percent of visitors to the official election website and users of the smartphone application, while greater interaction with the portal through mobile devices came from those between the ages of 25 and 34 years old.
Riyadh led with the highest percentage of users of the municipal election website and smart phone application, followed by Makkah and
other cities.
In turn, 112,372 voters and candidates of both sexes relied on the free hotline service for voters (199040), which was set up to receive
queries from individuals wishing to participate in the elections.
