Papua New Guinea mobile biometric voter enrollment trial with Credence ID successful

Papua New Guinea is set to employ an upgraded biometric voter registration system as the country looks forward to its national elections, using a solution which is said to be cost effective, provided by Credence ID.

The U.S. outfit announced in a press release that the new mobile biometric voter registration system had a successful pioneer field trial on October from 3 to 7 October during polls in Kupiano in the country’s Abau District.

According to the statement, the mobile registration solution includes the CredenceTAB integrated biometric data collection and matching system, which has the ability to simultaneously capture 10 fingerprints, a face, a signature and the location where the voters are being enrolled.

The company says that during the trail, new potential voters were quickly validated and added to the electoral roll thanks to pre-loaded voter information on the CredenceTAB platform. The biometric and biographic data obtained was then exported into a central database where duplicated information was expunged before being compiled and tallied. All of this is done in comparison with existing records held by the election management body so as to have an error-free voter register.

Simon Sinai, the acting electoral commissioner for Papua New Guinea said the new solution will go a long way in helping fight some of the common problems that have plagued the voter registration process in the country. “This technology is easy to use for both the operators and voters. We are now improving on the first trial and will do more trials to get prepared,” Sinai said.

Bruce Hanson, Chief Executive Officer of Credence ID said: “As a U.S.-based company with partners around the world, we are very proud to be supporting the democratic process of fair, open and inclusive elections in Papua New Guinea.” He added that the combination of their sophisticated hardware, software and services such as VIBE, CredenceCONNECT, and CredenceTAB “…provide a comprehensive and proven solution for voter ID projects.”

Credence ID also announced that during the recent Papua New Guinea trial, CredenceCONNECT enabled election officials to track and monitor future field enrollments, all of this with the help of non-personally identifiable information. These, the company said, can be mapped, analyzed and reliably handled from any web browser.

Plans for conducting a pilot phase for the new biometrics voter registration program in Papua New Guinea were announced last month.

Article Topics

biometric database  |  biometric identification  |  biometrics  |  Credence ID  |  deduplication  |  elections  |  facial recognition  |  fingerprint readers  |  Papua New Guinea  |  voter registration