Uganda Election: Why EC has suspended use of biometric machines

KAMPALA - The Electoral Commission (EC) says it has temporarily suspended the use of Biometric Voter Verification Kits (BVVK) in several polling stations after massive failures in different parts of the country.

EC Commissioner Stephen Tashobya, in an exclusive interview with New Vision, confirmed the suspension and said in areas where the kits had failed, the returning officers had been directed to instead use the manual register.

"We have decided to suspend the use of BVVK to enable thousands of Ugandans vote. Our returning officers can now use the manual register,” Tashobya stated.

However, even though Tashobya spoke to New Vision at about 9:00am, by 10:30am, the decision had not yet been communicated to several polling stations we visited, and most voters looked stranded, while some decided to forgo voting.

However, in areas where the decision was communicated, voting resumed normally.

On Tuesday, EC chairperson Justice Simon Mugenyi Byabakama, while addressing the media at their offices in Kampala Industrial Area, revealed that the EC had a backup plan in case the BVR kit failed at the polling station. 

“We are sending two kits to every polling station, and one will be on standby. We don’t expect both of them to fail. But the most important thing to note is that no voter will be disenfranchised. Every voter at a particular polling station will be given an opportunity to cast his/her vote.”

Arrival of polling materials

Although Byabakama said they had dispatched voting materials in time, some polling stations within Kira Municipality that the New Vision visited reported delayed arrival of the kits.

At Bukasa Kirinya Catholic Church, which had eight polling stations with 5,300 voters, the voting items arrived at 8:10am.

Kiira Municipality Member of Parliament Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda, in an interview with New Vision Online, said he had spent four hours stranded at his polling station at Kirinya Catholic Church.

“We advised EC at every stage. There was no law providing for biometric voter identification, but President Yoweri Museveni said he wanted it. We spent nearly sh100b to procure these machines, and they even came back for a supplementary of sh70b. They have recruited 100,000 officers to operate these machines, two per polling station, and trained them within seconds. In the whole country, the machines have failed,” Ssemuju said.

Ssemuju wondered why the commission had no centre of communication.