Africa-Press – Liberia. An election management group headed by former Chairman of the National Elections Commission, James Fromoyan, says the National Elections Commission (NEC) is not conducting a genuine Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) but rather the same Optical Marked Registration (ORM) that has been used over the years in the country.
According to The Center for Development and Election Management (CDEM), the system being used is a pseudo-biometric registration that is essentially an OMR registration in disguise.
“The only difference is the quality of the voter card. The prevailing biometric registration process is vulnerable to duplication because the current card only has a barcode, rendering it vulnerable to duplication,” the group noted in a press statement.
CDEM opined that the shift towards using the Biometric Enrollment System (BES) was supposed to ensure the prevention of multiple registrations and ballot casting by fingerprinting voters during data collection and verifying them on the day of the election. However, concerns have arisen regarding the application of the BES system in Liberia.
The group argued that the provision of registration cards on the same day of data collection is possible only in a non-challenging environment (where there is internet connectivity across the Country) as is the case of Countries outside the global South such as those in Europe, North and South America, Arabia, Australia, and most parts of Asia.
CDEM added: “In challenging environments such as Liberia, a genuine biometric voter registration process would entail the collection of data accompanied by the provision of voter registration cards at most after seven days.
“That period would enable the Commission to clean the roll by removing all multiple registrants that bypassed the system due to inactive internet connectivity during the enrollment or registration exercise.
“In Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, etc., countries that have challenging environments like Liberia, an acknowledgment receipt is made available to a registrant following the collection of his or her data and the biometric registration card is made available after at most a seven day period.
“To make available to a registrant, a biometric registration card on the same day of data collection in an environment like Liberia, as is being done by the Davidetta Browne Lansanah-led NEC, completely erodes any possibility by the Commission to remove from the roll any multiple registrants notwithstanding the mounting evidence of multiple registrations already reported.”
The election management group further expressed concerns over the figures announced by the NEC as results for the first phase of the prevailing Voter Registration exercise.
According to Mr. Fromoyan and his team, the figures announced have the trapping of a fake result because of machine failures and multiple other factors.
CDEM directly accused Madam Davidetta Browne-Lanasanah and her fellow partisan commissioners along with their sponsors within the corridor of government, who have deceived the Liberian people of being the beneficiaries of “the unfolding scam”.
According to them, National Elections Commission openly authenticated the fake nature of the current biometric registration process by announcing that the voter registration would be conducted using biometrics (digital) and that the casting of ballots would be done using OMR (manual). This practice is unprecedented in the history of electoral management anywhere in the world.
“With the many pieces of evidence relating to the multiple registrations occurring in Monrovia and its environs, one can imagine the alarming multiple registrations that are occurring in rural Liberia. Indeed, there is reason to believe that the result of the current purported biometric voter registration would give rise to a Final Registration Roll (FRR) that is vulnerable to fraud similar to what was obtained in 2017 or worse,” the group stated.
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