#PakistanElections: This mobile app and database helped Imran Khan win
What's the story
While allegations about clandestine military support continue against Imran Khan, it has now come to light that a mobile app was instrumental to Khan's victory in Pakistan's recently-concluded general elections.
The phone app, with its database of over 50 million voters, proved to be a key advantage in translating Imran Khan's mass popularity to votes.
How did it happen? We explain.
CMS
What mobile app was used?
The app and database in question is something called the Constituency Management System (CMS).
According to Amir Mughal, who was in charge of using CMS to help elect to-be finance minister Asad Umar, CMS was used by Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) across constituencies in Pakistan for both pre-poll targeting and poll day mobilization of supporters.
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CMS reduced weeks worth of work to hours
"It [CMS} had a great impact. Work that would take days or weeks is being completed in one to two hours," Reuters was told by Mughal, who also happens to be Asad Umar's personal secretary.
Role
The crucial role played by CMS for the general elections
Khan's PTI party set up CMS teams in constituencies across Pakistan to mine the CMS database by individually identifying political leanings of households, and zeroing in on "confirmed" PTI supporters.
Additionally, the app helped in getting PTI supporters to the polls on election day when the government's own telephone service announcing poll locations crashed, throwing other political parties in disarray.
Do you know?
How the CMS database was created
PTI workers used scanning technology to digitize publicly available electoral voter lists. Once done, they could feed CMS with a voter's identity card number to see his place of residence, family members, and voting constituencies.
Development
The app was resultant of Imran Khan's earlier complaints
The CMS app was developed in response to Imran Khan's bitter complaints following the 2013 poll loss, wherein he claimed that the PTI didn't know the "art of winning elections".
Initially created by US-based businessman Tariq Din and tech consultant Azad Gul, the early version of CMS was rejected by PTI.
However, following CMS' success in 2015 local polls, the party was won over.
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Imran Khan himself had urged the use of CMS
"I have seen and experienced how it [CMS] works and I'm using it in all five constituencies I am contesting. The faster you apply this system, the easier your life will become," Imran Khan told PTI candidates in a WhatsApp video-message weeks before the election.