Following the decline of Presidential accent to Electoral act (Amendment) bill, 2018, Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC have concluded modalities to deliver a free, fair and credible election in 2019, with the enhanced smart card readers.
The electoral act (Amended) bill has incorporated the card reader in other to give a legal backing to technology used in authenticating permanent Voters Cards, PVCs, of those prospective voters.
The absence of the card reader in the Electoral Act was frowned at by the Supreme Court when it dismisses contentions of election from some governors on the basis that the card readers were not used during election.
To give credence to this, the commission has decided to make provision for recording “incident” within the voters register different from the past when incident form were separate of the register as different document, as clarified by INEC official who pleaded anonymity.
According to the official, the data sheet of the voter register has now been modified to take care of the challenges encountered with failed authentication, at the same time providing a trail of voters affected for eventual back end remedies.”
He added the card readers have now been optimised in terms of its working system, an upgrade which will improve on challenges encountered in the past election.
The officer revealed, ‘’As for the hardware, the card readers now have a wider fingerprint scanner, upgraded memory, tamper proof facilities, better battery compartment locks and long lasting battery.
However, “For the software, the card readers now have better finger print matching algorithm, encrypted platforms, recapture of fingerprints after four failed attempts at authentication, auto date and time and many more.”
“On auto date and time, partisans have accused the INEC of pre-loading the card readers. What they mean is that the staff allows some politicians to buy voters cards and then assist them load on to the smart card readers in the some Polling Units and put the system ready for use before the election and then submit the card readers on election day.
He explained “In 2015, we noticed a slight use of this in some Polling Units. So, we now have auto date and time with the card reader communicating with the server within a specific time on Election Day. Any time outside the specified time is not possible to load on to the card readers again”,.
