Explaining biometric voter registration and biometric voter authentication

Mar 21, 2023, 4:16 pm EDT | Ayang Macdonald

BVR, which is the abbreviation for biometric voter registration, is the process by which people are enlisted onto a voter register by submitting information which includes their biometrics such as iris, face and fingerprints.

Many countries in Africa, and the world at large, are increasingly adopting this trend as part of efforts to modernize and render their electoral systems more credible. The technology is deployed to detect instances of voter fraud, such as duplicate registrations.

There have however been concerns in some countries like Nigeria about the safety and security of data collected via biometric voter registration.

BVA, or biometric voter authentication, on the other hand, is the process of confirming the identity of a registered voter at the poll by comparing their biometrics with data stored on a database.

Biometric voter registration can be utilized without biometric voter authentication to ensure that only eligible voters are on the electoral roll, but BVA must be preceded by BVR to provide the reference database to match voters against.