Dear Editor,
Bharrat Jagdeo, at his last press conference, rolled out his party’s latest line of resistance against the introduction of automated fingerprint biometric verification in our future elections. He argued that the opposition parties are calling for biometrics when biometrics already exist in the GECOM system. In attempting to throw Soesdyke sand in the eyes of the public, he was playing on the fact that the photos on our ID cards and on the folios (photo albums) used during voting are indeed biometric features that could be used for identification and verification.
Jagdeo, of course, fully knows that the opposition parties are, in fact, demanding nothing less than the use of the now common electronic automated verification system to process the biometric feature, and that biometric feature should be one’s fingerprints. Automation reduces the involvement of humans in contrast to a manual verification system where, for example, a polling clerk must use his/her naked eyes to compare your facial features on a hardcopy document with what she sees looking at your face in the flesh. So, the real issue is not the nature of the biometric feature (face or fingerprints or iris). The real issue is the manner of verifying the identity of voters (is this person who they say they are?) manually or automatically using computer technology. Guyanese then should not also allow Jagdeo to sow confusion.
Jagdeo’s ruse, however, to shift the focus to the use of photos as the biometric feature has opened up a serious concern which, in my view, has not received enough scrutiny. Most of the photos in the GECOM database will be seventeen years old by the expected election date in 2025, bearing in mind that the last house to house registration was conducted in 2008. Over a period of 17 years, people can look differently. For instance, as Jagdeo himself knows personally, a lot of men can get bald in that time. People lose or gain weight. A lot of wrinkles and facial recontouring can also appear. If, therefore, the current system of manually verifying persons through facial recognition is kept, GECOM polling staff and party scrutineers will face the challenge of comparing most voters in person with their stamp-sized 17-year photos in the 2025 election. With each following election, one can clearly see how indefensible the situation becomes. Are we going to use the same photos in 2030, 2035 and onwards? Regardless whether polling day staff can succeed in making the comparisons manually, a system with photos that old requires a total overhaul with updated photos. There must be an expiry date (after 10 to 15 years?) after which photos must be retaken.
In re-photographing eligible voters in any designated biometric collection exercise (BCE), it takes little additional effort to also re-fingerprint persons within the same process – a process made easier by digital technology. On the spot, instantaneously, such technology can confirm whether any biometric feature was properly captured or not, allowing it to be retaken immediately if necessary. The obvious intention is to prevent a repeat of what occurred during the aborted 2019 H2H exercise where 60,000 of the 370,000 fingerprints sent overseas for cross-matching produced no hit because of, in the words of former GECOM Commissioner Robeson Benn “bad fingerprinting.”
In undertaking the biometric collection exercise (BCE), several implications need to be addressed. First, the question of time. Much time could be saved because it is not critical that new ID cards be produced and distributed before the election. That could occur after the election. In terms of the BCE, it could take two to three months to select and contract a firm with expertise in Automatic Biometric Identification System and procure the necessary equipment. The BCE field operations could take one month. In Ghana, it took 40 days to register 17 million voters in 2020 using 7000 mobile photographing and fingerprinting kits. A few months will be required for training and in-house data processing. Secondly, the law must be clear that those persons who were not reached during the BCE (for whatever reason) must still be allowed to vote through the manual verification of their facial features (the folio and ID card system).
As Jagdeo and the PPP are advocating that we depend on the use of photos as the single biometric for voter verification at the place of poll, then they must explain to the nation what are their arguments against significantly improving the system by collecting new photos and automating the verification process.
Sincerely,
Sherwood Lowe