Photographic Voter Registration Flops

By Felix Osike THE US$12.7m (sh 22.8b) photographic voter registration system that had been planned for the June parliamentary elections has failed to take off. The Electoral Commission had spent US$7.5m (sh13.5b) on the project. Sources said experts advised the commission to revert to the manual system for the parliamentary elections because the project was time barred. "We cannot carry out that project, we are time barred. We shall use the manual registers for the parliamentary elections," said a source. Under the new system, eligible voters were to be issued with plastic voter cards bearing their photographs. This would eliminate multiple registration. The secretary to the commission, Andrew Muwonge, on Tuesday declined to comment. "I have no time at the moment. Ask the chairman for details," he said. There have been complaints from President Yoweri Museveni and the public that the voters' register is not accurate. The former British minister for overseas development, Linda Chalker, was in the country last month at Museveni's request to see how the project could successfully be implemented. Museveni had apparently lost confidence in the commission after its failure to properly update the register in time for the presidential elections. Sources said the photo IDs will be used for the 2002 local government and 2006 general elections. The Electoral Commission last month launched a pilot project in some districts to test the system. But sources said results from the trials showed that registration of voters in the 5,000 parishes would not be possible within a month. Experts had said 1,000 cameras would complete the cards with fingerprints for the over 10 million registered voters in 45 days. SWIPCO last November warned that the high degree of sophistication necessary for the project would be difficult to reach in a short time. It also said the project would not be operational in time because of compatibility problems between its components. Two computer consultancy firms, Omni Chron Corporation and Rank Consult are to be paid US$200,000 (sh360m) as consultancy fees for the update and cleaning of the voters' register. The commission claims that the update has already been completed. Rank Consult chief Frank Katusime on Tuesday declined to comment on the matter. The finance ministry has released US$290,000 as part payment of consultancy fees for the project. The Electoral Commission also paid sh154m to Graphics System for printing the ballot papers used during the presidential elections. It is not clear why the commission did not use the laser coloured printers and the roll laminating machines acquired for US$281,297. The commission has received digital cameras, batteries, chargers, floppies worth US$2.23m, registration forms and envelopes (US$373,280), 196 computer workstations (US $268,000) and database and network software (US $6000). Other items include, scanners (US$450,000), Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) software (US$ 605,000), imaging software (US$454,656), colour printers (US$127,000), roll laminator (US$ 154,297) and registration kits worth US$ 228,385. SWIPCO had said the ICR software does not indicate how fingerprints and signatures would be identified, separated from text on the forms and linked to each voter. Ends