By Thaddeus MENANG, Elections Cameroon
Introduction
With an
estimated total population of between eighteen (18) and twenty (20) million
inhabitants, and a minimum voting age of eighteen (18), the Republic of Cameroon
boasts a voting-age population of about eight (8) million.
This country,
situated in the Central Africa Sub-region, implemented biometric voter
registration (BVR) between 2012 and 2013. The circumstances and process of this
implementation are briefly described in the present case-study. Cameroon’s
election management body, Elections Cameroon, will soon release a more detailed
report on this exercise.
The present
case-study is divided into five main sections as follows:
1. Background
to BVR Implementation;
2. BVR
Preparatory Activities;
3. Data
Collection: Preparation and Roll-out;
4. Data
processing
5. Voter
Card and Electoral Roll Production.
1. Background to BVR Implementation
For a better
understanding of the situation existing before the introduction and
implementation of biometric voter registration (BVR) in Cameroon, one needs to
take a quick look at the political context and the technical environment within
which this technical innovation took place.
a. Political situation
When Cameroon
acceded to independence in the earlier nineteen sixties, several political
parties effectively took part in the political life of the country, although
some parties, notably “L’Union des populations du Cameroun” (UPC), were banned
because they had taken part in the armed struggle that preceded this accession
to independence. However, this period of political pluralism was short-lived as
in 1966, Ahmadou Ahidjo, then president of the young republic, convinced the
leaders of authorized political parties to join him to form a single political
party, the Cameroon National Union (CNU), in the interest of nation building.
The single-party
dispensation remained in place until the early nineteen nineties when, like
many countries of Eastern Europe and Africa in a quest for truly democratic
governance, Cameroon re-introduced a multiparty political system. During the
more than two decades of one-party rule, elections had become a mere formality
as all competing candidates were nominated by the same political party and
voters were not offered a choice between different political agendas as such.
This situation changed
radically with the return to political pluralism. Elections became hotly
contested events, with uncertain outcomes and looming threats of violence. The
threats of violence came partly from the fact that election management
procedures were seen to favour ruling parties and consequently gave rise to
numerous irregularities.
In Cameroon,
true to French political traditions, elections were conducted by the Ministry
of Territorial Administration, elsewhere the Ministry of Interior. Being a
government department, under the tight control of the ruling party, it was
considered by opposition party officials as biased and untrustworthy. It was
even popularly believed that election results were determined before voters
actually went to the polls. As a result of this state of affairs, election
outcomes were almost systematically contested by opposition parties and their
candidates for nearly a decade and a half and this created a foul political
climate that badly needed cleansing.
One of the
cleansing methods introduced by the government after decades of political
wrangling was the setting up of an independent body to take over the management
of elections from the Ministry of Territorial Administration. Thus, Elections
Cameroon (ELECAM), an independent body in charge of the organization, the
management and the supervision of elections and referendums was set up by law
in December 2006.
Elections
Cameroon went operational in January 2009 and, by December 2010, had set up its
operational structures at regional, divisional and local council levels and
effectively taken over the management of the entire electoral process. This
notwithstanding, some election stakeholders remained doubtful about ELECAM’s
capacity to rebuild confidence in the electoral process. On its part, the young
election management body was determined to make a difference.
b. Technical environment
In Cameroon,
voters’ rolls are permanent and are required by law to be updated every year.
The updating of these rolls is usually done between January 01 and August 31
each year and entails four basic operations:
- the
registration of new voters: those who have just attained the voting age and
those who, having met the required preconditions earlier, failed to register;
- the
expunging from existing rolls of the names of deceased person and of those
persons who may have lost the right to vote (imprisonment under certain
conditions, for example);
- the
transfer of names of voters from one roll to another, upon request, following
changes of residence;
- the
correction of errors relating to voters’ personal data, at their request.
Shortly after
Elections Cameroon went operational, a computerized national register of voters
was handed over to the young EMB, by the Ministry of Territorial
Administration, in April 2010. This register comprised some three hundred and
sixty (360) council electoral rolls, first established manually in 2004 and
updated manually, year after year, until 2007 when they were computerized and
used during the 2007 legislative and municipal council elections.
Established
under fairly precarious conditions in 2004, updated and later computerized
under equally unsure conditions, these rolls were considered by most election
stakeholders as thoroughly flawed. They were indeed believed to be the
principal tool for election rigging by the local administrative authorities who
managed elections prior to the advent of Elections Cameroon.
Thus, when
Elections Cameroon took over these rolls in April 2010, it urgently set out to
update them ahead of the upcoming presidential poll which was billed to hold
barely a year later. The local bureau of the United Nations Development Program
(UNDP) provided Elections Cameroon with election management software which was intended
to help the new election manager deal with various roll updating challenges.
Unfortunately,
the state of these rolls was such that even the best tools could not deal with
the challenges faced, notably:
- errors
committed during the initial recording of voters’ names and the subsequent
computerization of the rolls rendered the detection of duplicates very
difficult;
- within
a context where declaring the death of a family member was almost taboo and in
the absence of reliable civil status records, the names of deceased voters
could not be detected and expunged from the rolls;
- some
local council electoral rolls included the names of voters assigned to polling
venues in areas of residence that did not exist on the ground and thus were
generally thought to be ‘ghost voters’ assigned to ‘ghost polling centre;
- some
of the rolls were simply incomplete, following lapses during the
computerization exercise or damage to election documents caused by fire
accidents or floods.
The state of the
existing voters’ rolls was such that, despite all the efforts made by Elections
Cameroon to improve their quality prior to the October 2011 presidential
election, they remained largely unreliable.
In the aftermath
of that election, it became obvious that this problem could be solved only by
discarding existing electoral registers and proceeding to re-register all
eligible voters. The decision was thus taken by Elections Cameroon, in February
2012, to constitute entirely new electoral rolls. Biometric technology was
thought to be the most efficient tool for the purpose.
2. BVR Implementation Preparatory
Activities
The decision to implement
biometric voter registration (BVR) in Cameroon was thus imposed by the
circumstances described earlier. Little was known about the new technology on
the whole, and much less on its use in voter registration. ELECAM officials
thus set out to find out more about BVR and to determine how to implement the
new technology within the Cameroon context.
a. Fact-finding trip
In addition to
resourcing information about BVR through available literature, on- and
off-line, the Director General of Elections at Elections Cameroon decided to
travel to South Africa to acquaint himself with the new technology. Two reasons
guided his choice of this destination. First of all, the Independent Electoral
Commission (IEC) of South Africa had been using this technology for more than a
decade. Secondly, South African firms were known to have accompanied a number
of electoral commissions within the Southern Africa Development Community
(SADC) zone in the implementation of BVR.
The trip to
South Africa provided the Director General of Elections with the opportunity to
meet and discuss with different biometric technology providers who had
effectively assisted electoral commissions within the sub-region to implement
BVR. Thus on his return to Cameroon, he had a fairly good idea of what he
needed to replicate the experience in Cameroon.
b. Drafting of Terms of Reference
By mid-March
2012, Elections Cameroon had prepared a project document for the implementation
of BVR in Cameroon. The document included terms of reference which were made
available to prospective biometric technology suppliers to enable them tender
for the supply of the equipment, software and technical support services as
listed below:
- supply
of necessary biometric equipment and software for the collection, transfer and
processing of relevant biometric and biographic voter data and the constitution
of a national election database comprising approximately eight (08) million
voters;
- supply
of eight (08) million blank PVC cards to be personalized and issued to the
corresponding number of registered voters;
- supply
of the necessary equipment and consumables for the production of voters’ cards
and electoral rolls;
- training
of ELECAM employees in the use of the equipment and technology supplied;
- provision
of technical assistance to ELECAM during the roll-out of the various phases of
the project;
- completion
of the BVR project within a period of twelve (12) months.
c. Choice of Technology Supplier /
Technical partner
Following the
release of the terms of reference for BVR implementation by Elections Cameroon,
tenders were received from some twenty (20) firms, implanted in South Africa,
Europe and North America. Each tender indicated the number of biometric voter
registration kits that would have to be deployed, the number of persons to be
recruited and trained, the time-frame for the various BVR operations and the
cost of the equipment, the software and the services. All the tenders proposed
to use fingerprints and, eventually, photographs as the biometric elements to
be used in BVR implementation.
After an initial
study of the various offers, a shortlist of five (05) eligible suppliers was
drawn up and the latter were invited to organize demonstrations of their
respective BVR technologies at the ELECAM head office in Yaounde.
Following these
demonstrations, a final selection was made and the contract was awarded to a
German firm, Giesecke & Devrient, which had considerable expertise and
experience in the use of biometric technology in general, but which was going
to be involved in BVR for the first time.
d. Determination of Technical Details
Although the
choice of this company appeared to be problematic initially, on account of
their limited experience dealing with BVR, it turned out to be a blessing in
disguise. The company was willing to carry out the project as ELECAM would have
it done. They had no ready-made solutions or suggestions to push through at all
cost. Together, both parties sat down and, during an entire week, went through
the architecture and the relevant details of the biometric system ELECAM
thought it wanted to put in place.
Some highlights
of these details are listed below and in subsequent sections:
i. Architecture
of the biometric system
The biometric
system set up for the management of elections in Cameroon was to comprise ten
(10) regional biometric centres or hubs located in ELECAM’s regional
delegations and one (01) national election biometrics centre located at the
body’s head office in Yaounde.
Each regional
centre would host a database server and two (02) workstations. The regional
centre was to be placed under the responsibility of a hub administrator,
assisted by two (02) hub operators. The following tasks were assigned to the
regional biometric centre:
- management
and maintenance of all the biometric equipment assigned to the region;
- configuration
and assignment of biometric voter registration kits to the council areas within
the region;
- importation
into the hub server and verification of voter registration data coming from the
registration kits within the region;
- exportation
of voter registration data from the hub server for transfer to the central
database servers at the National Election Biometrics Centre in Yaounde
At the level of
the National Election Biometrics Centre, provision was made for the setting up
of the following systems:
- A
data management system (IMAGO) comprising database servers and workstations;
- A
data de-duplication (AFIS) system comprising servers and workstations;
- A
voter card personalization system comprising a card printer and workstations;
- Five
(05) printers for voters’ rolls.
ii.
Biometric
kit configuration
It was agreed
between Elections Cameroon and its German technical partner that the latter
would supply one thousand two hundred (1200) biometric voter registration kits
to be deployed throughout the national territory for the collection of voter
registration data from an estimated voter population of between seven and eight
million.
In terms of
hardware, each voter registration kit comprised the following elements:
- a
laptop computer;
- a
web camera;
- a
fingerprint scanner;
- a
receipt printer;
- a
led lamp;
- a
background canvas for taking photographs.
Each
registration kit was also accompanied by a small power generator to supply
power whenever electricity was not available.
The voter
registration software installed in the kit computer was designed to enable the
accomplishment of the following tasks:
- collection
and storage of six fingerprints and one face photograph from each voter
enrolled;
- collection
and storage of relevant biographic data from each voter as prescribed by law;
- matching
both biometric and biographic data collected from each registered voter;
- printing
of a registration receipt for issue to each registered voter;
- preparation
of a summary, in list form, of all registrations conducted by the kit at the
end of each day;
- encrypting
and transfer (export) from the kit to a special USB stick, at predetermined
intervals, of voter registration data for onward forwarding to the regional
hub;
- storage
of all voter registration data in the kit and re-exportation of such data as necessary.
Pre-installed in
each voter registration kit was a comprehensive list of all the potential
places of residence (cities, towns, villages, neighbourhoods etc.) within the
entire country. Each potential place of residence was matched by one or more
polling centres out of which the registered voter could choose as convenient.
Indeed, voters were invited to choose their polling centre at the time of their
enrolment.
3.
Data Collection : Preparation and
Roll-out
After the
signing of the contract with the German firm in April 2012, it took four months
before the first biometric voter enrolment kits were delivered. It took that
much time because the kits had to be built according to the specifications
agreed upon by the two partners.
As soon as the
first kits arrived, preparations kicked off in view of data collection,
beginning with kit operator training.
a. Recruitment and training of kit
operators
A total of about
two thousand four hundred (2400) kit operators were recruited and trained.
Whereas some of the operators were drawn from among ELECAM’s permanent staff, about
two thirds (2/3) of this number were comprised of temporary personnel.
The first level
training (training of trainers) was conducted by the German technical partner.
The training of the kit operators was subsequently handled by ELECAM technical
personnel, trained for the purpose.
b. Deployment of biometric registration
kits
The deployment
of the voter registration kits was preceded by the setting up and testing of
regional hub equipment. Once this was done, the registration kits were first
deployed to the regional biometric centres from whence they were assigned by
the hub administrators and subsequently deployed to the council areas where the
actual data collection took place.
In the kit configuration
and assignment process, the hub administrator, among other operations,
activated the list of potential residences and their corresponding polling
centres of the council area to which the kit was being deployed. This would
enable the kit operator to click on the mention ‘residence,’ when filling the
form, and have the list of residences and polling centres within the council
area displayed on the screen for the voter to choose from. This was to ensure
that a voters chose polling centres that effectively matched their residence.
The number of
kits deployed in any given council area was determined by the potential voter
population within the area.
c. Biometric registration process
The biometric
voter registration (BVR) process comprised several steps which kit operators
were trained to memorize and master.
- Step1: After logging in at the start of the day, proceed to
test the various kit appliances – camera, fingerprint scanner, receipt printer.
- Step
2: Check
eligibility credentials of person to be registered.
- Step
3: Take voter’s
photograph and ensure acceptance by automatic quality check.
- Step
4: Scan and check
quality of voter’s six fingerprints and mention exceptions if applicable (in
case of amputees).
- Step
5: Enter relevant
biographic data for voter identification as required by law.
- Step
6: Enter other
information as applicable – disability information, phone number, etc.
- Step
7: Crosscheck
information, then print and issue voter registration receipt.
d. Data collection and transmittal to
regional hubs
The actual
collection of data in the field kicked off on October 03, 2012 and was meant to
end on February 28, 2013. It actually went on until March 29, 2013. The turnout
at voter registration centres was rather slow at that start of data collection
operations. As a result, mobile voter registration teams were deployed within
all the council areas in addition to the fixed registration centres. At the end
of the process, data was collected from some 5.6 million voters.
The data was
first transferred, in encrypted form, from the kits to then hubs via special
USB sticks. Data from each region was assembled and cross-checked at the level
of the regional biometric centre before being exported to the national
biometric centre for processing.
4.
Data Processing
The processing
of voter registration data started in April 2013. But before that, two
important activities had to be carried out, namely, the installation and site
testing of central site equipment and tools and the training of central system
administrators and operators.
Central site
equipment and software were installed and tested in February 2013. Training of central
system administrators, operators and maintenance technicians was conducted in
March 2013, ahead of the launching of data processing and production
activities.
The processing
of voter registration data was conducted in three steps: importation and verification
of data, deduplication and, if necessary, adjudication.
a. Importation and verification of data
Data from the
regional hubs came in external hard drives. Once imported into the central
system, if was carefully crosschecked to ensure that the number of files
imported agreed with the number exported from each hub. In case of
discrepancies, the lacking files were re-exported by the hubs.
b. Deduplication operations
Before being
admitted into the central database production servers, the data had to transit
through the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) server where it
was crosschecked for possible duplicates or multiple registrations. All cases
of obvious duplicates were handled by the AFIS system according to the following
rules:
- If
two or more entries were entirely identical, only one was kept within the
system while the others were archived;
- If
the biometric data in two or more entries obviously belonged to the same voter
but slight differences occurred in the biographic data (change of residence,
date or place of birth etc.), the system would present the possible duplicates
for visual inspection and adjudication.
Adjudication,
which entailed examining and deciding the fate of two or more possible
duplicates, was done at two levels. First level adjudication was done by AFIS
system operators who were instructed, in the case of obvious duplicates, to
keep the latest entry and archive earlier ones.
More complicated
cases involving less obvious duplicates were resolved at second level
adjudication by system administrators and, eventually, by an adjudication
committee. Once second level adjudication decisions were implemented, data de-duplication
could be considered completed.
Other data processing
operations entailed effecting changes (changes of residence and minor
corrections), on request, to existing registrations. These changes were made by
operators under the supervision of system administrators.
At the end of
the data processing exercise, about one hundred and fifty thousand
(150 000) duplicates were deleted from the database, leaving a total of
five million, four hundred and forty five thousand (5 445 000) valid
voters in the national register of voters prior to the September 2013
legislative and municipal elections.
5.
Voter Card and Electoral Roll Production
The production
of voters’ cards and of polling station electoral rolls was launched after the
data processing stage. These final stages of the BVR process, undertaken between
July and August 2013, were preceded by the assignment of voters to polling
stations.
a. Assignment of voters to polling stations
The electoral
roll in Cameroon stipulates that the number of voters assigned to any given
polling station may not exceed five hundred (500). The determination of this upper limit is
based on the estimation of the time it takes to process one voter during
polling and is aimed at ensuring that the number of voters assigned a polling
station are able to vote before the closing of the polls.[1]
As stated
earlier, each voter was requested to choose a polling centre at the time of
his/her registration. Depending on the density of the voter population within a
given residential area, the number of voters choosing the same polling centre
could fall short of or exceed the upper limit of 500 voters. Whenever the
number of people who chose the same polling centre exceeded the 500 limit, it
became necessary to set up more than one polling station within the same polling
centre.
For this reason,
voters were assigned to specific polling stations within the pre-established
polling centres before their voter cards were personalized and the polling
station rolls printed.
b. Voter card production
Voter card
personalization kicked off as soon as polling centres started filling up. This
was intended to allow sufficient time for card distribution. Cards were printed
in batches and sent to the field for distribution after being manually checked
for lingering duplicates and printing quality.
c. Production of voters’ rolls
The production
of voter rolls for use in polling station was initiated only after
deduplication operations were completed and all eligible voters assigned to
polling stations. Polling station electoral rolls that carried relevant
biographic information about each registered voter as well as his/her face
photograph for easy identification on polling day. Two rolls were produced for
each of the more than twenty thousand (20 000) polling stations that
opened during the 30 September 2013 twin, legislative and municipal elections.
The rolls were
printed centrally at the National Election Biometrics Centre and dispatched to
the various polling stations as part of the polling station kits.
Conclusion
This, in a
nutshell, is an account of BVR implementation in Cameroon, conducted between
October 2012 and August 2013. Cameroon’s biometric national register of voters,
as stated earlier, is a permanent register which is updated each year.
The challenges
currently faced by Elections Cameroon, with respect to BVR implementation, are
ensuring the maintenance of the various components of the biometric system, on
the one hand, and collecting the relevant information needed for the updating
of the rolls, on the other hand. Maintenance costs are particularly high as
ELECAM continues to rely on external intervention for the proper handling of
certain maintenance tasks and for implementing necessary system updates.
BVR is
definitely one way of ensuring that voters’ rolls are reliable. But it is also
quite challenging and expensive.
[1] Polling stations usually
opens 8:00 am and close 18:00 pm.
