The Electoral Commission (EC) has ordered over 26,000 biometric verification machines to be used at the various polling stations nationwide during the 2012 general election, to enhance the integrity of the exercise.
The equipment is expected to arrive in the country for by the end of this month. The biometric verification machine is a hand-held machine that is used to ascertain that an individual �is who he says he is� or who she says she is�. It requires a biometric system or setup to operate in.
Each of the 25,000 polling stations throughout the country will be allocated with one of the equipment during the general polls while the remaining machines would be used as backups at the region and district levels.
The Director of ICT of the EC, Mr Hubert Akumiah made this known at Ho during a workshop to build on the capacity of the Parliamentary Press Corps in election reporting.
Already, the EC has a few of the biometric verification machines at its disposal and it intends to test them in the first week of October before they are used for the December polls.
Mr Akumiah explained that the first piloting exercise would be done at the offices of the Electoral Commission in Accra.
He explained that the verification machines would be used at the various polling stations on election day to identify voters, reduce errors and guarantee voters their right to vote.
The use of Biometric Verification of Voters (BVV) for the upcoming general election, according to the ICT expert, would be the first time it is being done in any major elections in sub-Saharan Africa.
The BVV is expected to speed up the electoral process, reduce the time voters use in queuing and also ensure total accuracy by providing very useful electoral statistics.
It is also expected to combine voter validation and election reporting, while also ensuring that voters cannot vote again at the same polling station or anywhere their data is not loaded.
In the last two decades, the EC has embarked on electoral reforms such as the use of indelible ink; use of voters� ID cards without photos; and the use of photo ID cards and photo voters register. Yet the system was fraught with challenges including unqualified persons registering and voting, multiple registration and multiple voting.
The biometric voters register (BVR) and the biometric verification of voters (BVV) are, therefore, expected to address the challenges that impede the electoral processes.
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