Following election, Ghana leads the world in biometric voter registration and verification
By having registered and verified approximately 13 million people for an election within 48 hours, Ghana has broken the world record previously held by India for 3.5 million people, GhanaWeb reports.
Ghana’s world record-breaking accomplishment comes after the country successfully completed an election using biometric voter verification and registration systems. The 2012 election marks Ghana’s successful sixth election since returning to Constitutional rule in 1992.
As reported previously in BiometricUpdate.com, the Electoral Commission of Ghana, in the run up to the election announced that voting would be suspended at any polling station should the biometric verification machine break down.
The voter identification cards used in this election contain 10 fingerprints, a headshot as well as standard biographical data.
According to the GhanaWeb article, of the total 26,000 polling stations across the country, 413 stations did not finish the voting process on the intended voting day and had to continue the next day. As reported by BiometricUpdate.com, despite time delays related to the new technology, the biometric system identified many multiple voters in this years election.
Ghana has now joined a growing list of African countries to use a biometric voters’ register for its election, including Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Nigeria.
Kenya is currently in the process of registering voters for its election, though as of yet, only 11 million voters have been enrolled using biometrics, significantly behind the country’s target of 18 million voters.
Article Topics
biometrics | fingerprint | government | government purchasing | verification | voter registration | voting
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2 Replies to “Following election, Ghana leads the world in biometric voter registration and verification”
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although we had an election using biometric verification equipment, we were told that the batteries on the verification had to be changed by 11am or else it will freeze. This, we are told, is the reason why several polling stations had to suspend voting for several hours whilst voters waited for new kits to be delivered. The issue here is why Ghana purchased equipment with batteries that had to be changed by 11am. And why EC officials have the guts to tell us this and why we as a people are not complaining. Amazing!
I usually tell myself that if we African countries developed our own Biometric Voting Software Solutions (BVS) for our African countries election exercises then the nuances of procured Biometric Voting Systems would not be as much. Locally developed biometric voting systems can be customised to our local languages for ease of use, integrated with ISPs and Mobile Service Providers that operate in African countries for ease of transmission of tallied votes, available for voter civic education and training of voters thus instilling voter & electoral clerks confidence in use of biometric voting systems way before the election date is due.
We have locally developed one here in Nairobi Kenya called ‘Biometric Voting Software System’ that is customisable for various situations and we are still improving it and open to ideas on how to make it suit our needs here in Africa. All details about it and pricing are found here http://www.jomutech.co.ke/biometric_voting_system.php We also help in capturing of biometric data for future voting exercises as biometric consultants.