Innovatrics revealed as biometrics supplier for Albania’s elections

Innovatrics has revealed that it supplied fingerprint biometric technology for voter authentication during Albania’s 2021 elections.

An article in the company’s Trust Report recounts how the country turned to electronic voting machines, allowing the election to be held on a single day, instead of the two days taken previously.

Votes were cast on Smartmatic machines, with voters verifying their identity with fingerprints at polling stations. The fingerprints were then deduplicated to check for possible double-voting with Innovatrics’ Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS).

“The leaders of the country recognised that biometrics would enhance the integrity of Albania’s elections,” says Alexander Rakov, Sales Vice President for Europe at Smartmatic.

Rakov notes that Albania was motivated in part by its desire to show the validity of its elections in order to qualify for acceptance into the EU.

The election delivered a verifiable, fast and transparent voting process for Albanians, according to the report.

Coincident with the report, Innovatrics has upgraded the biometric enrollment software of its ABIS to improve the user experience for both those being enrolled and operating the system.

Innovatrics’ ABIS supports face, fingerprint and iris modalities, and its enrollment software can now be implemented on a PC, with an improved user interface and frictionless user experience, the company says.

The ABIS now supports plug-and-play USB or built-in cameras for face capture, and operators are notified by the enrollment software if auto-captured fingerprints fail a real-time quality assessment. The upgraded user interface provides illustrated instructions to operators for fingerprint enrollment.

The BioScriber Mobile enrollment app for Android has also been released by Innovatrics with its latest face and iris recognition algorithms.

Updates from Philippines, Kurdistan, Kazakhstan

The Philippines’ Commission on Elections (Comelec) now says that online voter registration may not be launched until 2025, and voters will still have to register their fingerprint biometrics, photo and signature in person, according to the GMA News Online.

The update was delivered by Comelec Chairman George Garcia during a senate committee hearing. Even if PSA could share the biometrics it collected for the PhilSys digital ID, Garcia says, the data would not be legally valid because the country’s law requires it to be collected under oath.

Five of Kurdistan’s political parties agreed at a meeting to approve the biometric voter registration system accredited by Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC), along with several other items, Kurdistan24 reports.

Digital identity documents were accepted for voter verification in Kazahkstan’s election this month, reports The Astana Times.

Voters could use the country’s eGov mobile application to present a digital version of the voter identification document in the elections for the lower legislative house on March 19.

Article Topics

ABIS  |  Albania  |  biometric authentication  |  deduplication  |  elections  |  Innovatrics  |  voter registration