Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) began in early 2012 in Ghana, Africa. It has since been upscaling, with implementations in many other places across the country, such as Kenya (2013-2017) and Nigeria.
The BVR, initially introduced in Ghana, faced many challenges; however, it became a success a year later in Kenya, enrolling 14.3 million people. This number scaled up to 19.6 million individuals in 2022 and peaked at 22.1 million voters in 2022.
The African government has realized the importance of biometric voter registration. It brings transparency, reduces the chances of duplication, and eliminates the risk of manipulation in the voting count. This blog elaborates more on these and other factors.
What is Biometric Voter Registration?
Biometric Voter Registration, or BVR, is a simple technique used by African government officials to enrol voters in a mobile biometric terminal. The technology allows voters to pre-register and create biometric identities on an online portal, linking their identity proofs with their faces and fingerprints.
On the voting day, they bring the receipt received after completing the registration process or their Voter ID cards. The technology helps to avoid creating duplicate identities and prevent multiple voting by the same person. As a result, it brings transparency to the voting system. However, one should note that it is one method of biometric voting.
5 Reasons Why Biometric Voter Registration is Important in Africa
Highly Cost Effective
Biometric voting systems are capex-friendly as they require one-time registration and remain independent of specialized hardware. Today, biometric technology apps can help achieve voting goals.
Government employees can install the biometric app on multiple devices and see the voter details on a customizable dashboard, eliminating the need for a command centre to manage security. Moreover, the data is stored on a cloud or local server. A cloud server requires a monthly subscription, while a local server requires a one-time fee.
Additionally, the administrators can eliminate the risk of a person’s duplicate voting counts, as the system will revoke them. If the system predicts similarity in the person’s biometrics, it will also show a high-risk score, which is nearly impossible as biometrics are unique to a person. As a result, the IT overhead costs in resolving such instances would be substantially reduced or eliminated.
Decreases the Risk of Electoral Fraud
According to a 2019 Statista report, 24% of male and 19% of female respondents declared receiving monetary or non-monetary favour offerings for their state and national votes in Nigeria. The primary reason was supposed to be the higher poverty rates in rural areas than in urban areas, which makes rural voters more inclined towards electoral fraud.
Electoral fraud often occurs via identity manipulation and double voting. The inclusion of BVR will terminate the risk of fraud and impersonation. A biometric voting system identifies an individual’s unique characteristics, and the deduplication system removes duplicate voting.
Simultaneously, if the biometric voting system includes liveness detection, it eliminates the risk of tampering or spoofing as it can easily alert the administrators about the usage of video or photos during the registration or authentication process. Additionally, contactless biometric apps help the administration achieve the same goal. As mentioned before, it would bring transparency into the African election system.
Minimizes the Chances of Post-election Violence
News about election voting tampering and manipulation have resulted in violence across Africa. Moreover, the voters often show discontent in the elections and raise concerns about disputed elections. Such an instance happened last year in Sierra Leone when domestic and international observers criticized the transparency in the result tabulation during the June 24 electoral process.
Even the United States announced that officials found involved in the election manipulation would face visa restrictions. The inclusion of biometrics in the voting system ensures accurate counts for each candidate and a high level of transparency, minimizing the chances of post-election violence and election disputes and lowering discontent among voters.
As a result, it would bring political stability and reduce unrest during the election period. In short, democracy would remain untamed by voting manipulation or tampering with the involvement of a biometric voting system.
More Reach to Potential Voters
Biometric Voter Registration will help increase the voter count by providing more access to people in remote regions. For example, a biometric voter registration app with deduplication, liveness detection, geolocation, and other features will onboard individuals through their phones.
Such an app can also include a Know Your Customer (KYC) process that will allow the biometric identities of individuals to be secured. Moreover, it will minimize the risk of identity theft and fraud by alerting the administrators of duplicate registration attempts whenever it detects similar biometrics, as they are unique to a person.
As biometric mobile registration forges its way into rural areas and smartphones or tablets used mostly by commoners, the chances of enrolling more voters every year potentially increase. Such a biometric app would help bring political leaders who are more preferred by the masses.
Tackling Digital Identity Challenges
Digital identities have become prominent across Africa because of the services that individuals can avail of besides voting. Unfortunately, even during the digital revolution, the number of persons with government IDs remains uneven across the African continent.
The voting count needs to be improved, as a large population could remain ineligible for voting. As a result, it is necessary to ensure that voters are able to handle challenges during the creation of their digital voter ID.
Biometrics and KYC verification, including document liveness, can enrol more voters and create more government-approved identities. Simultaneously, they will help tackle the ongoing problems faced during the user registration/identity creation and verification processes.
Conclusion
Biometric voter registration, or BVR, may seem like a stepping stone to bringing transparency to Africa’s voting process; however, it offers much more. It helps to onboard more voters and increase the number of people with digital identities.
It will simultaneously decrease the risk of duplication during the voting process and minimize the risks associated with identity theft and fraud. Additionally, it will streamline the voter registration process, make the system spoof-proof and tamper-proof, and transform the document verification system.
Biometric systems will become the forefront of technology in the coming years across countries besides Africa, as they provide advantages beyond traditional systems. For example, mobile biometric voter registration streamlines individual onboarding and eliminates verification queues. Schedule a demo with Bioqube to learn how biometric technology is transforming nations.