Luis Villaherrera
Founder and President, TRACODA
Luis V. Villaherrera is an expert on democracy, AI, elections, and international development, he is the first Obama Scholar from the region and one of the finalists for the Kofi Annan Democracy Prize. His opinions have been published and quoted in Global Americans, and America Quarterly, among others; furthermore, he has been invited to Pod Save the World and Global Minnesota to share his work. In 2017 he co-founded TRACODA, which stands for transparency, social control, and open data, to create innovative projects that focus on technological tools and capacity-building to combat corruption and foster democracy and elections. He launched an open platform app to track governmental data to find possible cases of corruption, which had more than 500,000 visits before the government banned it. Luis is the founder of The Center for Democratic Strengthening, another initiative in the eastern of El Salvador. Luis’s developed boot camps on democracy, civic participation, and disinformation, have engaged more than 10,000 young people. Luis has developed projects that are helping journalists, think tanks and researchers on an international level enhance governmental accountability.
All Sessions by Luis Villaherrera
Session 2: Mobilising young people at the ballot box: good practices and challenges
Several studies have shown that young people are turning away from democracy and politics. However, recent elections have highlighted how mobilised young people can impact the result of elections. Recently, South African voters have been queuing up for up to 6 hours to cast their ballot in a process through which the main political party will lose its absolute majority after 30 years of unchallenged political dominance. From Poland to Guatemala, Zambia (2021), Argentine (2023), Liberia ( 2023), Senegal (2024), people were able to shake up the status quo by voting en masse to bring opposition candidates to power. For better or worse, voters can make a change, sometimes radical one. Even if elections are not enough to make democracy a democracy, they still matter for voters and political alternance is a key deterrent for corruption and abuse of power. In the year of elections, young people hold the key to reinvigorating democracy through the ballot box.
