Original question:

This question was posed by an ACE user through the "Ask a question" function in Electoral Advice.

I’m working with electoral assistance in an Asian country and one of the issues being discussed right now is the design of the voters’ roll and more specifically the use of a Photo Voter Roll. Our experience and knowledge on the advantages and disadvantages of a Photo Voter Roll is however quite limited and in order to take a stand in this issue it would be highly appreciated if you could please provide information against the following questions:

• In what context would a Photo Voter Roll be appropriate? What factors would argue for and against having such a roll?
• What steps are required to introduce a Photo Voter Roll and how much time do you estimate would be required to complete all steps?
• Do you have any examples of where (in which countries) these rolls have been successful and which development partners have supported these projects?
• Do you know of any country that have National ID cards based on the photo voter roll?

Thank you for your input.

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Summary of responses:

Posted on 24 May, 2007

Every election process must be structured to ensure that only legitimately registered individuals vote and that persons who appear at the polls to vote are in fact who they claim to be. Photo voter rolls and photo ID are two useful means to achieve this goal.

In some countries, photo voter rolls and IDs are not necessary either because the norm is to carry identification (national identity card, driver’s license, employment ID card, health care ID card etc) or because there is high level of trust in the electoral process. In countries where most of the population lacks identification, where there are irregularities in the voters’ roll and problems of impersonation, and where there is a lack of credibility in the electoral process, electoral authorities may consider introducing a photo voters’ roll, and maybe also a photo ID system.

Zambia introduced a photo voter roll in 2006.

Sometimes the introduction of a photo voter roll goes hand in hand with the establishment of a national computerised database of voters, as in the case of Yemen. If the voter lists are computerised and if the voters’ photos are taken at the time of issuing photo ID cards and available with the EMB, the two can be easily married to create a photo roll. This was done successfully in some states of India. 

The main advantage of a photo voter roll is that it helps prevent electoral fraud and forgery. A photo voter roll is a useful tool to verify the accuracy of voters list, to check impersonation and to detect and prevent multiple registrations. The positive consequence of this is the increased credibility and enhanced trust and legitimacy in the electoral process, especially among stakeholders with low confidence in the integrity of the voters’ list. In Yemen one of the additional benefits of the photo voter roll was the optimisation of the identification process of registered voters on election day, allowing a polling station to process larger number of voters in much less time and more efficiently. The down side is that a photographic roll is expensive to introduce and maintain. Naturally the cost will depend on many different factors; two of them are the required level of security and the choice of software.  

In some countries the photo voter roll and the voter identification card is an important instrument in preventing electoral fraud and for this reason the authorities may make extra efforts to integrate security features into the card. In 1990 Mexico adopted security-enhanced voter identification cards. To prevent forgery, nine security features were incorporated into the card’s design, making it almost impossible to duplicate or alter. The security features include a bar code, hologram, photograph and molecular fusion. Both the roll and the voters’ ID card were also laminated to increase security. Forgery has also been prevented by producing the card as a tear-off portion at the bottom of the registration form itself, bearing the same photo and pre-printed voter registration number (or any other feature in place) as the form. Another useful security features that will help prevent multiple registrations is a mechanism that can run a search within a database and detect pictures with the same face.

The process could also be either manual or computarised. While in Yemen batches of ID cards were photographed and scanned to create a list, the software used in Samoa transfers the very high quality voter photographs immediately to the voter list, without manual interference. This works well in a small country like Samoa, where registration is carried out in only a few central locations.

Before introducing a photo voter roll or a photo ID system it is advisable to consider not only security and cost, but also timeframe, legal framework, appropriateness, integrity and sustainability. An important appropriateness issue that was raised in India was the concerns of the photos of women being put in the list. This was smoothly solved by giving restricted access to the photo voter rolls only to election staff for use on election day and by giving public assess to a roll without photos.

A good practice is to learn from the experience from neighboring or model countries and to compare different alternatives. It is also advisable to pilot a new system in a limited number of regions in order to learn from the experience and to carefully evaluate the technology before further developing and gradually introducing it to the rest of the country. This was done in India during the 90’s and was proven very successful. Today India has introduced the photo voter roll to 50% of the electorate and will continue to introduce it in the rest of the country in the coming year.

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Replies were received, with thanks, from:

• Staffan I. Lindberg
• Aleida Ferreyra
• Almaz Atnafu
• Paul Harris
• Ross Attrill
• Debashis Sen
• Antonio Spinelli
• Dr. Noor Mohammad

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Links to related resources:

• ACE Encyclopaedia: Voter's Proof of Identification
• ACE Encyclopaedia:The Voter Identification Card: Advantages and Disadvantages
• Prospects for a Reformed Voter registration System in Yemen
• IFES Buyers’ Guide

Individual answers in full:

There are several countries that have included photos in the voter rolls and IDs, as they often increase credibility and trust in the electoral process. In some countries, photos registries and IDs are not necessary because either the norm is to carry identification (national identity card, driver’s license, etc) or because there is high level of trust in the electoral process.  In countries where most of the population lacks identification, electoral authorities often have to carry the responsibility and burden of generating voter IDs.

Moreover, improving voter rolls and IDs is in many cases a way to enhance trust in the overall electoral process. In order to respond to security and credibility issues, some countries have added not only photos, but finger prints, bar codes, hologram, etc into the voter cards. An important consideration will be to evaluate the adequate technology to be used. There is no one single answer for which technology is better.  However, there are several issues to consider: timeframe, legal framework, appropriateness, integrity, sustainability, and cost.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) used photo voter roll which was printed at the end of the day.  However, on election day the voter roll was printed without pictures due to the size of the voters and the cost associated with it.  The photo voter roll, although an expensive alternative, could be useful to verify the accuracy of voters list but could be cumbersome on election day.

In the case of DRC, the software and hardware that was chosen for the registration process was designed to produce a photo voter roll.  The development partners that provided support to the Independent Electoral Commission in DRC are Mission de Nations Unies au Conto (MONUC) and UNDP with the European Union as the major donor to the electoral process.  You may want to contact Ble Kacouchia at the Electoral Division of MONUC in DRC if you need detailed information about the registration process in DRC. 

Yemen introduced a photographic voter register for the parliamentary elections in 2003, with significant donor support. The voter card also has a photograph. The roll was updated and used in the 2006 presidential and local council elections.  Although a photographic roll is expensive to introduce and maintain, it can help in detecting and preventing multiple registrations and under-age registrations, and Yemen has recently used it for these purposes. Yemen has also been moving towards a national photographic ID card (including biometrics) and the photographic voter registers may well be used as the basis for this system.

Samoa introduced a voter register that included photographs before its last national election. Unlike Yemen, where I have also worked, the software used in Samoa, transfers the very high quality voter photographs immediately to the voter list. In Yemen a process of photographing batches of ID cards and then scanning them and using them to create a list is used. This is labour intensive and time consuming but seems to work effectively. In talking to the head of Samoa's electoral body, he said that the software used there worked very well, however we are talking about a voters list with 10s of thousands of names on it as opposed to a list of 10s of millions of names in a place such as Yemen. I think another reason that the software and hardware works so well in Samoa is that registration is carried out in only a few central locations. It may not work so well in countries with large populations and where vast distances have to be traversed in order to allow all eligible voters the opportunity to register.

Certain states in India including West Bengal have been using photo-electoral rolls with great effect. I am personally in charge of making the transition. So far, about 50% of the nearly 50 million people electorate already has their photos in the electoral rolls. I have a target of reaching 90% coverage by December 2007 and rest in early 2008.

Some States of India, starting from the late 90's, have extensively piloted, developed and gradually introduced the use of photographic voters’ lists in their elections. More recently, this innovative concept has significantly spread, becoming increasingly popular and being adopted by a number of countries worldwide. Recent examples include Azerbaijan, Uganda, Ghana, Yemen and the Philippines. Bangladesh is currently considering its adoption, with the possible introduction of photographic voters’ lists being extensively debated.

Because the example of Yemen has been mentioned several times in this discussion and because photographic voters’ lists were introduced during my work of electoral assistance in this country, I thought useful to provide some more details on how the system of photographic voters’ lists was conceived, adopted and implemented by the Supreme Commission for Elections and Referenda of Yemen.

Interestingly, photographic voters’ lists were introduced as a result of a technical cooperation exchange that brought senior Yemeni electoral officials to visit the Election Commission of India, as part of an electoral support project I was managing for IFES in mid-2000.

During their visit to the Election Commission offices of Punjab, the Yemeni electoral officials remained highly impressed by the production of voters’ lists with photographs of registered voters which, in their view, addressed some of the problems they were experiencing back home. The Yemeni electoral officials saw this element as very appropriate to their situation.

Until then, voter registration exercises in Yemen had been conducted very poorly and were marred by severe deficiencies and technical problems. Subsequent attempts to amend these deficiencies were carried out by the electoral commission neither with a clear mandate nor with an open trail to document the legitimacy of these amendments. Such a flawed amending process only further compounded the problems by having all stakeholders losing the already low confidence in the integrity of the voters’ list.

Compared to the previous systems, the new voter registration system introduced for the 2003 Parliamentary elections in Yemen presented technical and technological innovations, such as:

(1) the introduction of a photograph not only in the voter card (previously registered voters were provided with a sort of a cheap paper receipt without any photo) but also in the voters’ register; and  

(2) the establishment of a national computerised database of voters.

One of the most common irregularities marring the voting process in Yemen was the problem of voter impersonation (or “personation”). Given the very low quality of the registration receipts issued to voters (not bearing any photograph) there had been frequent cases of such irregularities. Many voters, when reporting at the polling station to vote on election day, confronted the situation that they couldn’t vote because their name had been already ticked off the voters’ list since other persons had already voted “on their behalf”.

Photographic voters’ lists successfully addressed - once for all - the “impersonation plague”, because election day procedures for voter identification (and, thus, for the determination of eligibility to vote) were based on three key identification elements that had necessarily to coincide:  (1) the photo of the voter on the voters’ card; (2) the face of the person reporting to vote; and (3) the photo of the same person on the voters’ register.

In addition to solving the impersonation problem, the introduction of the photographic voters’ list in Yemen presented additional benefits, such as:

• The optimisation of the identification process of registered voters on election  day, allowing therefore a polling station to process larger number of voters in much less time and more efficiently;
• A dramatic increase of the overall perception of electoral stakeholders of the integrity of the voters’ list and, thus, on the legitimacy of the elections.

The voters’ register contained an exact replica of the voter ID card, with the same information and the photograph of the voter (see attached picture nr 1 below). After each page of the register had been completed, to prevent any alteration of the information therein contained, it was laminated with a security self-adhesive plastic layer (transparent) which could not be removed, if not by obviously damaging the page (see attached picture nr 2 below).  The voters’ card presented exactly the same security features.

The electoral commission decided to computerize the voter registration data it had captured only at a later stage, when the month-long voter registration had just been completed. A computerized centre was rapidly established (with support from UNDP and IFES), in which data entry clerks worked in different shifts (24 hours/day, 7 days/week) and manually entered the captured data (with the only exception of the photograph that, being taken manually with a Polaroid camera, could not be properly digitized) to create a preliminary voters’ list.

While the data computerisation process, if better planned from its beginning, could have been made more efficient and less laborious by adopting some limited technology (e.g. "OCR" forms and scanners), in the end, the "manual" version proved to work reasonably well for the environment it was supposed to serve.

All the completed registration books were orderly filed in archives at the voter registration centre, so that they could be used as a reference tool when the computerized system would bring up entries having some common features (for instance, entries with the same names and the same birth date, etc). In such instances, in a matter of minutes, the original registration books (in paper) were retrieved from the archive and the relevant data (particularly the photograph of a voter) would be manually quickly verified (for instance, two same names with the same face in the photograph would unequivocally prove a case of double registration).

The main downside of this system was that the non-digital photographs could not be entered in the computerized database due to their poor quality (often taken in dark rooms or pictures were out of focus), but also because at that time there was no software that could run a search within a database and detect pictures with the same face.

Although not perfect, the system of using the original hard-copy registration books as a reference tool to verify potential problems detected by the computerized system proved to be efficient, sustainable, suitable and affordable in the local environment of Yemen, because independently developed and locally owned.

The introduction of photographic voters' list in Yemen must certainly be regarded as a first, very positive step in a good direction that, of course, needs to be gradually maintained, refined, improved and expanded over the next few years.

A number of countries are using photo rolls. If the voter lists are computerised and if the voters photos are taken at the time of issuing photo ID cards and available with the EMB, the two can be easily married, through a print module, to create a photo roll. We did it in India first as a pilot project in two assembly constituencies of Haryana and Kerala each and the Commission then decided to extend it to the whole state of Kerala and Pondicherry.  Now it is being extended country wide.

The photo rolls I have seen have normally 3 columns and 10 rows in A4 size paper and each box has the photo and the elector's details. The concerns shown were with regard to photos, particularly those of women, being put in the list.  However, if the photos rolls are given only to the election staff for use on the poll day which is collected after the poll, and the roll without photo is published for objections by the voters and the political parties, this concern can be addressed easily.

Photo roll can be a great tool for checking impersonation and can be created as a bye-product of the voter registration/voter card exercise. The additional cost incurred is only in terms of toners and paper.

The first "photo voters roll" I saw was in Honduras in 1993.  It consisted of a box of copies of voter cards and was supposed to contain the same records as the separate printed list but often did not, according to multiple reports.

Brazil and Mexico both have photo voter rolls which seem to work well.

Inspired by Ghana's success with a photo voters list, Liberia introduced this approach in 2005. The Ghana Elections Commission gave generous technical and material assistance to the Liberian EMB who also enjoyed considerable support from, inter alia,  the UN and IFES.

I was there at the planning stages but absent when it all took place. However, I understand that the photo voter list was instrumental in reducing personation and increasing public and other stakeholder confidence in the list and the electoral process generally.

It's worth pointing out that the registration process was intended to take voters photos anyway and produce a Voter ID card at the registration centre. Therefore the extra cost of going the extra mile and putting the photo on the list was marginal.

I am disappointed to read that, despite capturing the voter's photograph during the field registration exercise in DRC, the final list did not include those photographs.