For the 2015 general elections, the commission has decided to introduce the use of Card Readers (CRs), which will be used on the day of election in every polling unit and voting point, to verify and authenticate the PVC presented by a voter. This is so as to eliminate or at least drastically minimise multiple voting and confer additional credibility to the electoral process.
The commission ordered for the production and delivery of 182,000 customised CRs, sufficient for the 150,829 voting points (VPs), plus redundancies. Out of this number, 154,500 have since been delivered and distributed to the states and FCT. The remaining balance of 27,500 have been produced and shipped and is expected on Wednesday, February 4th.
Configuration of the CRs sent to the states commenced last Thursday, January 28, 2015 and is now virtually completed, with minimal challenges. We have tested the durability and functionality of the CRs, using internally acceptable standards of quality assurance (QA) and are satisfied by the results.
We have worked out the modalities for using the CRs, which have been endorsed by the political parties, and which have now been incorporated into the Guidelines for the 2015 general elections.
Using the CRs has enormous advantages. First, once configured, it can only read PVCs issued by INEC. Second, it reads the embedded microchip in the card, not the barcode. Third, it enables authentication of the identity of the voter by matching his/her fingerprints with that stored on the chip. Fourth, it keeps a tally of all cards read, all cards verified/authenticated or not, with all their details. Fifth, this information can be sent to a central server using and SMS. Sixth, the stored information on the server would enable INEC audit results from polling units, as well as do a range of statistical analysis of the demographics of voting, something INEC has never been able to do effectively. Seven, the RA/Ward Collation Officer can use this information to audit PU result sheets and determine whether accreditation figures have been altered (a common feature of electoral fraud).
Using the CRs has two main challenges. What if a Card Reader fails? What if a person is verified but his fingerprint cannot be authenticated? We have worked with political parties and agreed on what to do if any of these arises.
In the highly unlikely event that a CR fails, we have enough spares to deploy before the end of accreditation at 1 pm and adjust the time to gain lost time. If we cannot replace before end of accreditation, then election in that voting point would be postponed to the following day when a new CR would be provided.
If a voter’s PVC has been read and his details verified, but his fingerprints cannot be authenticated, or he/she has no fingers, an incidence form would be written by the Presiding Officer of the voting point and the voter would then be accredited. Party Agents and Observers would be there to testify to this.
The nation has invested a lot in the CRs and PVC technology and the commission believes that using them in the 2015 general elections would confer remarkable transparency and credibility to the electoral process.
There have been demands that the commission should revert to the use of Temporary Voters’ Cards (TVRs) issued during the 2011 registration and the subsequent Continuous Voters Registration (CVR).
The TVCs have no chips and therefore cannot be verified/authenticated by the CRs. Also, there were more than 4 million cases of multiple registration; people with TVCs, who have been removed from the certified Register of Voters for the 2015 elections, once the use of TVCs is allowed, many of these would inundate polling units on election day; their names will not be in the register, and they would start agitation that they have been ‘disenfranchised’, as was the case during the Anambra State governorship elections in November 2013.
In any case, people who collected PVCs no longer have TVCs because they used them to exchange for PVCs. Additionally, a high percentage of voters had to use the attestation forms provided to collect their PVCs due to loss of TVCs on account of floods, insurgency, etc.
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