Biometrics use in Ghana elections matures

Ghana once again put the use of biometrics to the test during its December 7 general elections which was won by opposition candidate and former President John Dramani Mahama. It is one of the countries in Africa currently deploying biometrics beyond the voter registration stage.

While the use of this technology has come with several advantages to add to the reputation of the country as a bastion of democracy reflected in peaceful and transparent elections in Africa, there are also downsides which have triggered several concerns including accusations of system failures and wasteful spending of state resources.

During the general elections of last Saturday December 7, biometrics played an important role – from voter registration, database deduplication as well as bi-modal biometric verification (face and fingerprints) of the 18.3 million registered voters who were eligible to be verified biometrically on election day.

While the use of the biometric verification system was said to be generally successful, some glitches and failures were reported. In one polling station in the Ketu North Constituency in the Volta Region, aged voters reportedly faced difficulties in having their fingerprints recognized due to aging and other physical deformities.

Ghana News Agency reports that in the wake of the complaints, officials of the Electoral Commission (EC) resorted to using the face biometrics modality to successfully verify affected voters.

“The aged face some unique challenges with the fingerprint devices, but we are committed to ensuring that every eligible voter has the opportunity to cast their ballot without undue stress,” a polling station agent, Frederick Nyaletey, was quoted as saying.

Sege Constituency in the Greater Accra Region of the country also witnessed fingerprint scanning failures among some voters, prompting authorities to make recourse to facial verification, as narrated by City News Room.

In all the instances where biometric voter devices failed, there were reported significant delays in the voting process as many voters had to wait longer than planned to get sorted out.

The challenges notwithstanding, the EC has over time shown strong commitment to ensuring a fraud-free electoral process. While preparing for the 2024 polls for instance, the election agency decided to add the liveness detection feature to the voter verification system to combat fraud in the transfer of voters from one polling station to the other. The move came after it was realized that the names of some registered voters were illegally transferred from three polling stations to others without them physically showing up for verification as provided for by the EC’s Constitutional Instrument.

Ghana first deployed biometrics during its 2012 general elections for voter registration with the system supplied by GenKey later criticised for failures. Technology from other suppliers was later used for the 2024, 2016 and 2020 elections.

In 2020, Neurotechnology said its biometric system helped expunge almost 15,000 duplicate registrations. Laxton and Thales were involved in biometric voter registration for the elections of that year.

In the buildup to this year’s elections, the EC faced accusations of wasteful spending on biometric devices. This forced the agency to publicly explain that it procured new biometric gear in 2020, departing from a plan by the previous administration to refurbish existing devices, which would have cost the state more than $50 million in losses. It is not clear if any new biometric devices were acquired for this year’s elections apart from those of 2020.