This process was wholly funded by the government of Uganda. It was reported that donors had
pulled out of the biometric technology procurement after failing to agree with the EMB on the
sourcing of suppliers.
However, inadequate stakeholders’ consultations led to insufficient information and voter
education regarding the new system and its relationship between registering for the national ID
and voter registration. As a result political parties complained that they were disadvantaged as
they did not mobilise their supporters to register as voters.
The cut-off date of May 11 2015 for inclusion in the voters’ roll also disenfranchised potential
voters who turned 18 years between May 2015 and February 18 2016. In my view the cut-off
date could have been brought forward to a few months before the 2016 elections.
All presidential candidates were given in soft and hard copies of the voter registers. These were
also used at polling station by party agents to mark and keep a record of who and how many
people voted. In addition, the national voters’ register was also available on the electoral
commission’s website. The voter location slips were issued in order to minimise time spent by
voters locating their polling stations since as the country uses polling station based voters rolls
whereby one is only allowed to vote at one designated polling station and not anywhere within
the ward or constituency. The slips were distributed by the respective parish and sub-county
supervisors something equivalent to a constituency and ward level in Zimbabwe.
In addition there was also an SMS facility where one could get to know their voting location
upon inquiring through SMS. These are good lessons for Zimbabwe to tap on given that the
country has a wider mobile network coverage.
It was also interesting to learn that the biometric voter verification system (BVVS) equipment in
Uganda was procured at an estimated cost of KSh3 billion (about US$1 million) was used at all
polling stations on Election Day. Over 30 000 machines for the 28 000 polling stations were
procured.
The machine identifies voters and the voting status by using either the thumbprint or a barcode
on the back of the national ID or a barcode on the voter location’s list that was issued two weeks
before the polling day. The aim of the system was to strengthen the identification of voters
through biometrics so that no one votes more than once in a particular election. The use of
BVVS was also seen by some observers as a good practice for fraud prevention and identity
verification mechanism.
The verification kits worked in most polling stations, hence quickening the verification process.
They were abandoned at few centres due to human errors not machine errors like putting wrong
access codes and lack of skills to use them. In those situations they reverted to the printed voters
register paper copies of the voter lists with photographs that the presiding officer can use to
identify voters which were available at each polling station as an alternative option in case of
technology failure.