US state lawmakers look at biometrics for voting, say it’s just not ready

There are just too many fingerprints for election officials in the state of Arkansas to reliably be matched with computing devices.

Biometrics is not mature enough to accommodate a huge database of 3 million people.

And what about all the potential voters without fingers or even hands, wonder Arkansas legislators.

The fraud committed in Arkansas is too … complex or unusual, maybe, to be addressed by the early examples of biometric systems used around the nation and the globe.

Those are some of the prominent arguments put forth by legislators who, as required by a state law, had to examine whether it was time to deploy biometric scanners for guaranteeing elections credibility.

They said it is simply is not feasible, according to reporting by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. Yet.

Most of the politicians quoted in stories in competing local publications said they will wait for biometrics to catch up to the demanding intricacies of their small Midwestern state.

When pressed, legislators said state residents probably would not trust the technology, either.

They said people would not want to lose their right to an anonymous ballot, even though a fingerprint or iris scan would replace or augment the signatures that voters are already required to provide, but which are not attached in any way to ballots.

“While we think that is something that will come at some point in the future, we’ve just not got to that place yet,” said state Rep. Stephen Meeks (R), according to reporters for television station KPVI.

It could be that Arkansas just needs a good consultant from somewhere that is experimenting or even succeeding with biometrics-based identification.

Biometrics are used for elections in various countries around the world, including Kenya and Jamaica, but are more often used for voter registration.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  elections  |  fingerprint biometrics  |  fraud prevention  |  legislation  |  United States