By Thaddeus MENANG, Elections Cameroon
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.
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:
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:
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.
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:
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:
At the level of the National Election Biometrics Centre, provision was made for the setting up of the following systems:
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:
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:
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
