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In the excitement leading up to April's presidential election in Nigeria, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) may have gotten a little carried away with its mandate to have a clean and fair elections. In the INEC voter registration process, prospective registrants are required at scan all 10 of their fingerprints, one at a time, using a small livescan fingerprint reader.

You can see the scanning process in this video from Michael Olafusi. You can also see where this process is going to create at least 3 big issues.

1. Scan Quality

When the finger touches the flat scanner surface, the elastic skin deforms based on the quantity and direction of the pressure applied by the user. This introduces distortions, noise and inconsistencies in the captured fingerprint image, making each image different each time a single finger is placed on the sensor plate. Now add in finger surface conditions and the accuracy of the fingerprint capture device and its operators, and its remarkable that the INEC process records fingerprints at all.

Nigeria's National Youth Service Corps, who are staffing the registration points, have resorted to constantly wiping fingers and scanners with methylated spirits (denatured alcohol), making sure the fingers of the registrant cover the face of the scanner completely, and holding the finger down for better contact.

2. Scan Quantity

Since scanning just one finger print is so troublesome, multiplying the scan variability out to all 10 fingerprints increases the error possibility and frustration level by 10x for everyone, including the famous. According to Daily Sun, it took 3 scanners, INEC officials, IT experts, and the state Resident Electoral Commissioner to register former president Olusegun Obasanjo.

But why scan all 10 fingers to begin with? Might that be data overkill? I think I have to agree with Akin Akintayo:

Whilst 10-fingers provide data high data uniqueness, the data variables are unnecessarily high for the mass of registrants. Someone got carried away with data quality and lost the context of throughput and processing. One finger is enough 10 fingers is madness raised to the power of insanity. I think the INEC Registration coordinators should recalibrate the system and issue new instructions for single thumbprint capture

Yes, data storage is cheap but the lengthy voter registration process could also discourage voters and be a subtle form of elections disenfranchisement. In this case, disenfranchisement that includes the ex-president of Nigeria and the current Senate president among countless thousands (millions?) of others.

3. Scan Use

So now that NIEC has all 10 fingerprints, of dodgy quality at best, how will it use the fingerprints during the elections? Will voters need to provide all 10 fingers to be scanned again to vote or just one? Wouldn't the voter registration card with its photo be enough to guarantee only one vote per person? The card has its own unique identifiers that would be easier and faster to check on a hectic election day, and in counting only one vote per card, NIEC would achieve one vote per person.

So why would the Nigerian government be so keen on collecting 10 fingerprints? Could Akin Akintayo be right in his worry about alternate uses:

Generally, the 10 fingers are only captured for police documents or in this age of paranoia regarding terrorism at certain points of entry around the globe.

I hate to think that this voter registration exercise has been sold to the election commission as a dual-purpose function to be shared with the security agencies which for all intents and purposes can be very helpful to crime solving for but it should not have featured at all in the primary exercise of voter registration.

The issue of civil liberties probably has not gained enough traction as to the sensitivity of this kind of data, who would eventually have access to it, how it would be secured, if citizens have right of access to modify or delete their information and much more.

Right now, security is the first issue to worry about. All those digital fingerprint records at each voter registration station? They're saved on portable hard drives.

Nigerians are excited for the presidential election on April 9th. It is shaping up to be an interesting race, with the current president even announcing his candidacy on Facebook.

They are also excited to register to vote using 132,000 direct data capture (DDC) machines - an electronic voter registration process by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that's new to Nigeria. But just as registrations are getting started, reported of technology problems are starting to come in.

Voter Registration Issues

The Canadian Press reports there are basic registration issues:

At a school on Lagos' Ikoyi Island, officials argued with each other at a distribution point hours after volunteers should have staffed their locations. When workers finally opened the metal cases containing their laptops, printers and extra batteries, they discovered the electronic equipment hadn't been charged, in a country where electricity remains scarce.

Then Possicon details the power issue and the problems it presents:

Once election officials sorted out the power issues and found the right passwords, they ran into technology problems with the thumbprint scanner, which is supposed to ensure there is one vote per person.

Abdul-Hakeem Ajijola reports that the Zinox USB Finger Print Reader is not working, because the computer is not loading its hardware driver. Possicon says this is true at Adeye, Rashidi Oyekan and Adenola streets in Ketu, Lagos.

Preparation, Not Technology

Looking at these issues, the root cause is clear, a lack of preparation. The members of Nigeria's National Youth Service Corps, who are staffing the registration points, should have tested their registration equipment and the process at each location before the opening day of voter registrations.

Voter Registration Card with wrong gender

This is a basic rule of any technology deployment: test, test, test before you go live. Do practice runs of the technology itself (laptop, scanner, printer, etc), then test the process by running it with sample fake data, then test it on a real voter, then test it on a group of voters, all long before you actually open the registration station.

If the National Youth Service Corps staffers had done this even the day before the voter registration process started, there would not be so many issues happening on the first morning.

Still, there isn't an issue everywhere. Akinzo says that once the glitches are worked out, electronic voter registration is a seamless process in Shomolu. The average time to register voters dropped to less than 10 minutes per person, which is impressive considering the lack of preparation.

What's Next?

Now Bisii brings up a good question about all the Zinox laptops, fingerprint readers, and printers: What happens to INEC's equipment after this year's election?

I would suggest that the 132,000 computers (with at least 80,000 Zinox laptops), go to needy Nigeria university students. Let them buy the laptops through a state subsidy, like Kenya's Wesesha program. This would jump start Nigeria's ICT future better than free .ng domain names.

Raila Odinga registering to vote in 4 minutes flat

Regardless of their political affiliations, ICT firms should be pushing electronic voter registration and voting in every country of Africa. Why? Not only does it increase participation in the elections process, and make it more transparent, it also makes great business sense.

Here's an example from Business Daily Africa: the Kenyan constitutional referendum earned several suppliers of technology goods and Internet services millions of shillings when the Interim Independent Electoral Commission (IIEC) used electronic registration and voting in 18 constituencies.

Nokia, the largest handset manufacturer, supplied IIEC with 18,000 mid-tier mobiles worth Sh38 million, according to documents seen by Business Daily. Listed telecom firm Safaricom provided 100 megabytes (MB) of data for each of the mobiles, earning it over Sh2 million in the two-day process.

Apart from handsets, the IIEC staff used laptops and other peripheral devices to conduct voter registration, voting, and tallying of results. The electoral body has said it plans to spend about Sh32 billion in a step by step process to build the infrastructure that would see Kenyans vote electronically in 20,000 polling centres around the country by 2012.

Now that's a political change I think every ICT company can vote for!

The relative calm surrounding Kenya's constitutional referendum held on August 4 is a stark departure from the violence that marred the infamous 2007 general election. The proposed constitution would limit presidential power and institute land reform, among other changes. One factor that may have contributed to the peaceful vote was the use of information and communications technology.

Officials used e-mail, the internet, and SMS text messages in all phases of the referendum process – voter registration, campaign and actual voting. Such technology has helped contribute to the perception that the process and results were fair, unlike in 2007, when disputed results sparked violence. It also helped officials take swift action against hate speech.

Exceeding Goals for Voter Registration

Kenya’s Interim Electoral Election Commission sought to create transparency in the referendum process. For the first time ever, it conducted the electronic registration of voters in 18 pilot constituencies across the country. The 10-day exercise targeted more than 1.8 million voters in 1,400 registration centers. By sending an SMS text message with their identification card or passport number to 3007 from any network, Kenyans received a text message response confirming that their registration was valid.

Electronic registration helped the election commission surpass its target of registering 10 million people. At the close of the registration exercise,12,656,451 citizens registered to vote. Prime Minister Raila Odinga described the electronic voter registration as revolutionary compared to the old manual system of voter registration. The old system, he said, was "susceptible to abuse by partisan electoral officials."

The proposed constitution was distributed widely in an effort to reach as many citizens as possible. The group that drafted the constitution, the Committee of Experts, made their e-mail addresses public and would occasionally receive questions from the public seeking clarification on certain clauses.

In the run-up to voting, Kenyans used the internet and mobile phones to spread the draft constitution, known as a Katiba. To see the apps developed for the constitution, click here.

Monitoring Hate Speech

Nearly 4,000 people were deployed across the country to monitor the circulation of hate messages and the use of hate speech in public. These “peace committees” were formed as part of The Uwiano Platform for Peace, a joint initiative of the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC), PeaceNet Kenya and the National Steering Committee on Peace Building and Conflict Prevention.

Red and green voting factions

The peace committees used voice recorders and mobile phones to monitor and relay information to a 24-hour station at the NCIC offices. The NCIC received thousands of SMS messages reporting incidents of violence, hate speech and other activities that threatened peace. The committees created pages on Facebook to spread the message of peace.

Comments made by politicians in political rallies were also monitored as were leaflets asking some ethnic communities to leave certain areas. Some of the leaflets retrieved contained threatening messages telling some communities to “leave in peace or leave in pieces.”

One government minister has been suspended for allegedly using hate speech. President Mwai Kibaki took action against Dr. Wilfred Machage, the assistant minister for Roads, pending the determination of a hate speech case in court against him. Machage was charged with four counts of incitement to violence and was accused of uttering inciting words likely to stir ethnic hatred on June 10.

Machage is accused of saying: “Wa Maasai chenu hakiko Rift Valley, mashamba yenu yote yataenda kwa serikali.” (“You the Maasai, all your land in Rift Valley will be repossessed by the government”). The Rift Valley is an area where violence flared after the 2007 election.

Steps Toward Credible Voting and Election Results

The election commission monitored the registration and polling using Blackberries donated by the United States Government. The Blackberries provided field personnel with telephone, SMS and e-mail access to headquarters from any location in Kenya. The built-in global positioning system capability was supposed to accurately map all registration and polling locations throughout the country.

Eager to know results of the polling, Kenyans have been keeping in touch with the tallying by texting to 3007. Eighty percent of the constituencies were expected to convey their results using a new Electronic Voter Tallying system. Out of 27,689 polling stations, results from 21,000 stations were transmitted electronically to the constituency tallying center and the national tallying centers. To ensure that the relaying of the results runs smoothly, 210 ICT officers have been deployed across the country.

As of this writing, the constitution looks to have passed and peace seems to have won out against violence.

This article was originally published by AudienceScapes as Kenya’s Referendum Shaped By Technology. AudienceScapes publishes research and reporting on media and communication technology in developing countries.