Not with standing the approach of abstracting the voter registry from the civil registry, it is important that the election administration should remain responsible for generating the voters lists.
There are several arrangements throughout the world where the public administration (e.g. Ministry of Interior) produces voters’ lists which are then used by the election administration. However, such arrangements are problematic. The difficulty lies in the following question: who is responsible for the quality of voters lists and their impact on the outcome of an election event? To avoid such issues, it is advisable to have a single entity in charge of both producing and using voters lists, therefore being responsible for all outcomes related to their use.
Whilst still in an experimental phase, it is possible to build a civil register on the basis of a voters’ register. The figure below exemplifies a structured way of transforming the electoral register into a civil register over consecutive electoral cycles.
A periodic voters register cannot serve as the basis for building a civil registration system since it lacks the structure enabling continuous registration of events. However, when it has been transformed into a fully-fledged permanent voters register the opportunities are open. Voter registration ought to be compulsory as voluntary registration is not conducive to complete, current and accurate vital statistics. It should be noted that the approach is not uniform throughout the country. Compulsory registration can be coupled with incentives - such as linking the possession of the voters’ card to obtain basic public administration services such as for example health, attendance to school for ones’ dependants, banking, etc.- to further enhance the reliability of the civil registry to be constructed. Once continuous voter registration activities are optimally performed, it is possible to extend the data collection component with recorded vital statistics.
Challenges to the implementation of this process are many and the process needs to be carried out in a systematic manner to be in the forefront of possible setbacks. First, a wellfunctioning public administration that supports the continuous voter registration activities needs to be in place. Moreover, legislation could further support the integrity of the data by encouraging compulsory registration. Finally, the absence of good coordination between the different agencies involved (e.g. the EMB and the Ministry of Interior etc.) may result in the production of different series of vital statistics which are inconsistent. Coordination needs to take place at two levels: the data-collection level and the data processing level.
Recently, in the DRC, as mandated by law, voter registration was successfully conducted in 2005-2006. It has resulted in a single comprehensive file containing demographic and biometric data (portrait and two index fingers) of about 25 million inhabitants from a population estimated to be 65 million inhabitants. Given a relative young population in the country, it is assumed that 38.46% of the population captured by the electoral register represents above 80% of the adult population. Therefore, the electoral register is currently used as the national identification file. In order to obtain a passport, the single document to be presented is the electoral card, making the electoral card not only a de facto national identification document but enabling the electoral register to play the role of a civil registration system. However, this approach has its limits and disadvantages. For instance:
