Burkina Faso completes voter registry, Innovatrics and Gemalto technology used

The Electoral Commision in Burkina Faso has just completed its biometric voter registry, and as Innovatrics has just announced, its WebAFIS Deduplication services played an integral role in the process, led by Gemalto.

“The Burkina Faso Elections project is deemed to be a great success, we wholeheartedly recommend Innovatrics’ WebAFIS technology to any client requiring reliable large-scale fingerprint matching solution accompanied by a dedicated team and support,” Tall Nouroudina, Director of IT for the electoral commission said.

Innovatrics’ WebAFIS software integrated with a fast fingerprint matcher, was seleted by Gemalto as a core component for electoral data processing.

Gemalto, as the main contractor for the Burkina Faso parliamentary and municipal elections, last year provided the electoral commission with thousands of Coesys mobile enrolment stations across the country to develop the voter registry. The enrolment stations capture demographics, a digital photograph, fingerprints and a signature.

Reported previously, Innovatrics’ ANSI&ISO SDK has recently been implemented by the UIDAI for an authentication system with Akash 2 tablets.

Around the world, and particularly in emerging economies, biometrics are a part of the election experience, though some high-profile elections as of late have been riddled with problems and distrust (and misuse) of the technology.

In December, 2012, Ghana held an election using biometric verification devices as the world watched with baited breath. Now, nearly six months after the country’s election, results are still being contested, following much confusion over the status of verification machines during and after the election in Ghana.

This isn’t the first time the biometric system used to verify voters has been called into question after-the-fact.

Reported previously, Henrique Capriles Radonski, leader of the opposition in Venezuela, has demanded an audit of the entire election including fingerprints stored in the election registry, following his party’s loss by less than 2 percent in the country’s recent presidential elections.

Also, following an election in Kenya using biometric verification, the machines were heavily criticized for technical problems which led to long delays and in many cases, non-functional verification devices. 

Article Topics

elections  |  fingerprint  |  Gemalto  |  Innovatrics  |  verification  |  voter registry