Voter biometric authentication - From Ghana to Venezuela

A Ghanian voter going through the
biometric verification process (Photo:UK in Ghana Flickr)

Although in this blog we promote the adoption of voting technologies as a mean to enhance efficiency and transparency, we understand the fact that having appropriate technology is not enough to guarantee success in election administration. A trouble-free implementation of the technology is paramount to achieve legitimate results. Also, the technology to be used on election day needs to be properly audited and tested, and mechanisms to solve unforeseen problems need to be developed. 

Two drastically different experiences serve to illustrate this point: the Venezuelan presidential elections held in October 7, and the December 7 elections in Ghana. 

In Venezuela, and for the first time in the history of elections, biometric devices were used to authenticate 100% of the voters. The elections ran smoothly, voting ended on time, and the results were published only two hours after polls closed. Opposition leaders conceded the defeat immediately. The very few problems encountered by voters on election day were solved according to a well designed contingency plan.

On the other hand, on December 7, Ghana headed back to the polls for the tenth election since democracy was reestablished in 1992. Although Ghana took an important step to increase electoral efficiency and transparency by automating this part of the electoral cycle, a poor implementation of the biometric system led to important setbacks that forced officials to extend voting for an extra day. According to the Coalition of Domestic Election Observers, 18% of polling stations across Ghana had some kind of problem with the biometric devices. In those regions were problems were reported, 33% of polling stations had difficulties. An inconvenience of this magnitude gave all the right to the opposition parties that lost the elections to complain, and served as basis to support their fraud claims. Political instability followed the elections, and post electoral violence erupted in certain cities. 

A few facts explain the different outcomes that biometric authentication had of in these two countries. In first place, the Venezuelan electoral commission was executing its eleventh automated election. The experienced gathered in eight years alongside Smartmatic, helped enormously. For Ghana, this was the first automation in their short democratic history.

Another determining factor was the fact that the Venezuelan platform was thoroughly revised prior to Election Day. More than 22 audits, tests and pilots were carried out in order to guarantee that the system worked properly. Technicians from all parties involved participated. In Ghana, the biometric platform was not sufficiently revised and that is one of the main arguments used  by opposition parties to explain the fraud allegedly committed. 

Also, in Venezuela, automation covered the entire election, from end-to-end, whereas in Ghana only the authentication relies on technology. Opposition parties claiming fraud in Ghana had little or no records to sustain their allegations. Authorities must ensure to build trust in the platform by allowing everyone to audit and review the system. Ghana and Venezuela are two good examples of what to do, and what not to do when it comes to automation.

2012: An electoral year in retrospective

Image: Freedigitalphotos

2012 was an exciting year for electronic voting and for democracy in general. Many countries around the world gathered their citizens around the polling stations, some of them using the advantages of electoral technology. Let’s take a look at some of the electoral highlights of the year:

March: Putin gets reelected in Russia

Amid accusations of fraud, Vladimir Putin was reelected Prime Minister of the Russian Federation with 60% of the votes. The NGO Golos, defender of transparency during elections, denounced more than 3,500 irregularities committed during the electoral event. The ruling party’s initiative to install more than 200,000 webcams at polling stations to gain credibility backfired because these actually registered several acts of bribery, ballot stuffing, carousel fraud, and misuse of voting coupons.

April: Burma moves forward on the road to democracy

Burma held parliamentary elections for the first time after 50 years of military oppression. Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader who headed the fight for democracy in the country, warned about the setbacks that would emerge during the electoral event, such as damaged ballot cards and names missing from the register. These obstacles are typical of elections held with manual voting methods.

June: Mongolia debut a new voting system for Parliamentary elections

Mongolians went to the polls to select seventy six parliament seats using a new voting system: 2,446 Precinct-Count Optical Scanners (PCOS) were used across 1,905 precincts. In spite the benefits brought forth by automation, problems with the deployment and implementation of the voting technology, raised controversies regarding the validity of the result.

July: Elections in Mexico carried out with questionable electoral technology

Mexico was ready to take the leap from manual to automated voting last year, but leaving the automation process to an incompetent company was a huge mistake that threatened to leave the Latin American country completely devoid of the opportunity to modernize its electoral platform.

October: Brazil and Venezuela demonstrate the power of e-voting

Media outlets all around the world commended Venezuela for its use of electoral technology during their last presidential elections. Meanwhile, Brazil took the challenge of leading more than 140 million voters to the polling places to assign more than 5,500 posts through e-voting, and the challenge was swiftly overcome. These two countries offered proof that vote automation is crucial to carry out multiple elections at the same time with fast and reliable results.

November: USA reelects Obama

Americans attended the polling stations to reelect their incumbent president. Amid the confusing use of different voting methods between constituencies (encompassing both manual and electronic voting), and an audit system that is not exempt from failure, people elected Barack Obama for a second term. 

December: Ghana elects its President amid technical snags

Ghana embraced the modernization of its elections by implementing biometric authentication at the polling centers, but technical glitches led to long delays in some areas. In a tight race, incumbent president John Dramani Mahama of the National Democratic Congress defeated its rival Nana Akufo-Addo.

In 2013 we will be watching as nations around the world walk into the modernization of their elections and the improvement of their democracies.

Technical glitches tarnish Ghanaian presidential elections

Biometric authentication has been implemented in Ghanaian elections. Photo: The Iconoclast News

The adoption of electoral technology by itself is no guarantee that an election will be carried out efficiently. After all, the process must be done by a competent entity that can ensure reliable results. Ghana took a great leap towards the modernization of its elections by implementing biometric authentication at the polling centers, but its poor management and other aspects of the electoral process have practically voided the benefits of the new measure.

On February 15th, 2012, Africa’s Electoral Commissioner, Dr. Gwadwo Afari-Gyan, announced that Ghana’s 2012 elections would feature the use of biometric authentication to identify voters at the polling station. The process used was somewhat rudimentary compared to what countries like Venezuela have experienced with the Integrated Authentication System, but it included fingerprint scans of all ten digits, in this case. A digital picture of the voter was also taken and printed on his or her voting card.

Theoretically, this should have ensured a fair exercise of democracy, and even though it did stop some attempts of double registration in different districts, the lack of public order entailed certain difficulties. Two verification machines were stolen in the city of Tamale, and ‘macho men’ —heavy, muscular individuals used by political parties to disrupt elections— set ballot papers, coalition sheets and verification machines on fire in Ablekuma. Besides, the Ghanaian Electoral Commission (EC) was accused of hiring an Israeli company to transmit election results. Dr. Afari-Gyan assured the public that all scrutiny and transmission processes are being carried out exclusively by members of the EC. His intervention inadvertently revealed another faulty aspect of Ghanaian elections: in spite of the implementation of biometric authentication, voting in Ghana is still being done manually, and results from each polling place are transmitted via fax to the central authorities. Unsurprisingly, numerous technical glitches led to long delays and extensions in the electoral event.

As of December 9, no definite winner had been declared yet. This is because technical snags in the biometric data verification equipment were so widespread that they hindered the whole democratic process, proving how improvisation can do more harm than good.

Ghana took a sensible step toward the improvement of its elections, but good intentions are not enough. The African country needs to rethink the way it protects its democracy, as electoral technology needs to be provided by a serious provider that can guarantee that its technological equipment will not become an obstacle to suffrage. The government also needs to double its efforts to warrant security and order at all electoral events.