The Question

This question is posted on behalf of Kisimba Albert, member of the Practitioners' Network.

NB: This question has been translated from French. See below for the original version.

Review of the electoral roll is a complicated task, especially in countries like Democratic Republic of Congo with poor infrastructure and no reliable population registries, and where voter cards are used instead of identity cards.

In this context, it is useful to revise the electoral roll, in order to make it reliable.

1. Is a door-to-door operation in order to count the eligible voters considered to be good practice?

2. Is it good practice to gather voters on a village or district basis in order to identify them and compile a proper electoral roll?

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La révision du fichier électoral est un exercice complexe, très complexe dans un pays sans infrastructures et sans registre de l’état civil fiable ou seul la carte d’électeur fait état de carte d’identité ;
Par ailleurs et sur exigence de rendre fiable, plus au moins exhaustif le fichier électoral, il est utile de le revoir.
1. Est-ce que faire du porte à porte pour recenser les électeurs est une bonne opération ?
2. Peut-on procéder par le regroupement des électeurs par village/quartier pour identifier les électeurs et faire un fichier correct ?

Summary of responses
Door-to-door voter registration and registration on a village/district level are both accepted methods of updating an electoral roll. It is noted, however, that both approaches require that an EMB is able to commit significant time and resources to the process and that registration takes place over several days. Deciding which method is most appropriate depends, in the view of one expert, on what the deficiencies are with the existing roll.

The validity of door-to-door registration is seen as being contingent upon voter registration being voluntary, that there are adequate safeguards in place in terms of voter identification and that political parties are able to observe the process.  Several replies highlight the added difficulty and expense of door-to-door registration if it is conducted with biometric technology. Another expert is of the opinion that such a registration process would be impractical and too costly for a country like Democratic Republic of the Congo; more appropriate would be to have registration centres that voters visit.

The Constituent Assembly Election in Nepal in 2008 is given as an example of a door-to-door enrolment process. 

There is some ambiguity over whether gathering voters on a village or district basis refers to physically gathering people in a communal place, or to them visiting a voter registration centre. If it is the former, then post-conflict situations are mentioned as appropriate for village assembly, while best practice for the latter would be to have the voter registration centre and polling centre as one and the same place. 

Bangladesh in 2007-8 is cited as a successful example of a village by village voter registration drive and assembling villagers in a communal location is said to have worked well in Cameroon (with sufficient time and collaboration).

Examples of related ACE Articles and Resources
Encyclopaedia:
• Voter roll maintenance 
• Continuous register

Consolidated replies:
• Biometric voter registration: Skills required and problems encountered 

External Resources
• Rebooting the System: Technological Reforms in Nigerian Elections, 2010 – 2011, Innovations for successful societies

• Nurturing Democracy in the Horn of Africa: Somaliland's First Elections, 2002-2005, Innovations for Successful Societies 
• Managing the Political and Practical: Nepal's Constituent Assembly Elections, 2006 – 2008, Innovations for Successful Societies 
• Interview with Bhojraj Pokharel, former Chief Election Commissioner of Nepal, Innovations for Successful Societies 

Names of contributors
1. Zsolt Bartfai
2. Carl Dundas
3. Idi Boina
4. Atem Oben Henry Ekpeni
5. Bhojraj Pokharel
6. Ali Salatou
7. Ronan McDermott
8. Jennifer Widner

Both solutions may work if well prepared and EMB has sufficient time and/or resources to organise the voter registration. It includes that the voter registration is not a one-day exercise but a longer period (3-4 days) is provided for this.

For option no. 2 (village by village) I would like to draw your attention to the case of Bangladesh where in 2007-8 the EMB with logistic support from the Army conducted a successful voter registration exercise which resulted in an accurate VL. 

For  solution no. 1 I can't tell you an precise example, but it also exists. For technical reasons (i.e. checking documents proving eligibility, recording data in electronic database, taking photo of the voter, etc.) the door-to-door exercise might be difficult to implement.

Hope, this helps you.

In a voluntary system of voter registartion, house-to-house enumeration is an acceptable method of compiling the register, provided that adequate safe guards such as photograph and finger printing or more up-to-date biometric ID means are used, and opposition scrutineers are afforded the opportunity to witness the process.

There are circumstances when village assembly for the purposes of registration may be appropriate, for example in post conflict situations.

With the practice of continuous registration of voters spreading, this latter practice may soon become outdated in normal situations. 

Rien n'est facile dans la vie et surtout des questions qui exigent des matériels humains,finances, beaucoup d'énergie et même des fois des mesures de sécurité. L'opération proprement dite est difficile car elle constitue la base pour un processus électoral. Plusieurs méthodes peuvent être mis en oeuvre,l'essentiel est d'obtenir les résultats escomptés. Toutefois, chacune d'elle nécessite de faire des plans prévisionnels, déterminer les voix et moyen pour atteindre ces objectifs. A partir de là,le calendrier du processus électoral,va vous guider à faire un choix de la méthodologie à suivre,avec les moyens disponibles.Il est à noter qu'en matière électoral,il ne faut jamais se figer sur un seul plan, il faut avoir deux à trois plans selon le texte,bien sur tenir compte des priorités. Pour terminer, procéder à un recensement de quartier à quartier, village à village, préfecture à préfecture,l'essentiel est d'obtenir des résultats tangibles et satisfaisants.Avec les moyens mis à la disposition, vous arriviez à planifier et voir,ce qui sera beaucoup plus favorable. Enfin,servez vous des anciens listes électorales, des fichier du recensement général, des listes au niveau des cartes nationales au niveau des états civiles,pourquoi pas demander une autorisation,pour entrer dans les établissements scolaires....... tous ces matériels vont vous servir comme base de travail pour monter à bien un fichier électoral fiable et transparent. Des tes cas sont nombreux surtout ici en Afrique francophone.

I agree with Carl's comments. Voluntary systems that are very inclusive in the form of Commissions where key stakeholders are giving the opportunity to participant may be the best as in option one. However, this method require resources and logistics and should limit those eligible from registering in the local EMB office if they desire. Such system should have adequate safeguards (biometric features) to prevent duplications.

Assembling villagers in their community halls or chief palace for the purpose of registering them has worked well in Cameroon. However, this was on condition that the registration commission spends days and weeks in each villages and collaborated with locals to ensure every eligible person is registered.

In any case it is ideally important to apply various technology to prevent duplication especially if Medium tech is used where commissions manually take data and later use computers to detect duplications.

Preparing an accurate voters list is a ongoing challenge in the electoral world. As indicated by previous experts both the systems are used depending on the context. Which ever system is in practice its success or failure depends on various factors including the policy of the election commission, requirements for enrollment (documents, any proofs, etc), level of voters awareness as well as their motivation, participation of political parties, efficiency, effectiveness and sincerity of enumerators, geographic reach, timings, etc. 

In Nepal during the Constitution Assembly Election (2008) community school teachers were mobilized as the enumerators and a campaign was drive to reach every household to enroll all the eligible voters. It worked well but we also faced some practical challenges. As an example in the rural areas the family (farmers) used to leave the house early in the morning to their field and returned late evening. Thus they were not available during the official hours. In such cases the enumerators had to visit several times in the same house to collect the information. 

La révision d'un fichier électoral est en soi-même une tâche complexe, laborieuse et surtout délicate. Elle est entourée de beaucoup de suspicions, surtout quand elle se déroule dans la perspective d'une élection majeure. Les électeurs sont de plus en plus désabusés au regard des lendemains électoraux qui n'ont pas comblé, dans la majorité des pays africains, les espérances d'une meilleure gouvernance.  A celà il faut ajouter la dispersion de la population sur un vaste territoire, avec des zones difficile d'accès et non désservies par des moeyns de transport réguliers. Comment dénombrer les électeurs quand se faire recenser s'apparente parfois à une corvée ou tout au moins sans intérêt perceptible ? Dans un tel contexte, et pour un pays comme la RDC, il est illusoire d'attendre que les électeurs se déplacent au delà d'un certain rayon. Afin de ne pas courir après une impossible exhaustivité, la distance à parcourir ne doit pas aller au delà d'une ballade pédestre. Les agents recenseurs doivent aller le plus loin possible afin de minimiser le plus possible les distances à faire parcourir aux électeurs. Les contraintes et autres désagréments doivent être pour les agents électoraux et non pour les électeurs ! Le maillage territorial doit être le plus dense possible afin de toucher le plus grand nombre. Je ne crois pas nécessaire de faire du porte à porte. La solution médiane, moins onéreuse, moins contraignante pour les populations, consisterait à établir et multiplier des centres de recensement, facilement identifiables et accessibles, à pouvant être établis en certains lieux (bâtiment administratif, église ou mosquée, hangar, grand arbre...etc.) dans tous les quartiers, villages, hameaux, campements...etc. Il y a un coût à celà, mais les contraintes financières sont-elles une raison suffisante pour une autre option que l'on sait pertinemment insufisamment satisfaisante ? La réponse à cette question indique la qualité de liste voulue et par conséquent le niveau jugé supportable/acceptable d'omissions. C'est la grande question à résoudre, inclusivement, par tous les acteurs d'un processus électoral. 

First of all, what are the problems with the roll? A clear understanding on the nature, scale and geographic scope of issues with the current role will help you to decide what is the best approach to updating the roll. If many young citizens have turned 18 since the roll was prepared, they will be missing from the roll. The roll may contain many names of citizens who have (a) died or left the country, (b) moved to another place or (c) changed their names. So, first of all you should conduct some field tests (list-to-people and people-to-lists) based on a solid sample in order to help you answer the first question.

If, as was the case previously in DRC, you plan to use technology to capture data and biometrics, the challenge of doing this door-to-door are significant. In the Bangladesh case mentioned by Zsolt, the door-to-door staff did not use any technology - just paper forms. The registrants then had to go to a centre where the computers were in order to have photographs and fingerprints captured. Mobile technology is more expensive than fixed technology (generally).

(I am interpreting Q2 differently to Carl - i.e. I am assuming people are not being asked to assemble, rather, to visit a VR centre) When you ask people to travel to a centre in order to register, it is best practise to make the Voter Registration Centre and the Polling Centre one and the same place. This makes it easy for people to know where they will vote - VR Centre=Polling Centre. It also simplifies the task of assigning voters to polling stations. Obviously, you have to finalise your Polling Centre arrangements prior to the commencement of Voter Registration - this can be quite a challenge for many EMBs.

However, this approach means you need as many VR Centres as you have Polling Centres. If you want to put technology in each VR centre - this pushes costs up significantly. This is why most VR exercises involving technology are conducted in a phased manner - one VR kit will visit many VR Centres over an extended VR exercise. The phased approach saves on procurement of kits, but means that the VR field work will take longer. There is another vital impact of the phased approach - you will have to work much harder on Voter Education to inform citizens when the kit will be in their village or neighbourhood - this is harder than you might think!

There is no easy answer - but I would certainly do some field research to determine the scale and nature of the problems with the current roll in order to make the strategic decision (that is - door-to-door or Voter Registration Centres?).

Best of luck!

To see some of the pros and cons associated with various approaches, you may want to skim ISS case studies on the recent Nigeria election, the initial Somaliland election, and Nepal (plus Mr. Pokharel's wonderful interview).  The link is http://www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties