Biometrics to prevent electoral fraud

With the parliamentary election about one year away, Election Commission (EC) is scrambling to purge polling places of the fraud and multiple voting, identity theft and vote miscount and other voter identification related problems that plagued our earlier contests. Only way to combat these voting fraud related problems is to introduce computer based Biometric Voter Identification System (BVIS) in the next general election.

Although EC claims to have a database or voter lists of 75 million voters, they have no means of accurately identifying these voters during the polls. The EC database only contains information such as name, address and voter ID number which is inadequate to identify the genuine voters. In fact, a proper voter database should contain information on biometric identification such as photograph, fingerprint or retina scan. As EC is planning to go for fresh voter list, they should ensure that proper database with biometric information such as fingerprints and facial images is included in order to conduct a fair election in the next polls.

Large-scale biometric implementation is neither complicated nor time-consuming or too expensive. It is estimated that total cost to implement BVIS for 30,000 voting center across the country should be under US$50 million only. This is only a drop in the bucket compared to the mammoth cost of conducting a national election. With the support of some of our international donors like the United Nations, the USAID, the British Government, and the European Union, the Election Commission can easily implement this electronic voter registration and biometric authentication system for our next general election. Even after the election, thousands of these biometric authentication servers, PCs and scanners can be either donated to schools or utilised for large-scale applications such as national ID card and driver license programme, education board examinations, secure passport or visa issuance, and border entry/exit applications.

The system will provide the EC with an effective and affordable solution to substantially reduce or even completely eliminate the potential fraud in the election process by ensuring the integrity of the 'one person, one vote' concept.

The Opposition parties crying for election reform should rather urge the Election Commission to seriously consider this suggestion to plug the loopholes for election fraud through the latest facial and fingerprint biometric technology. The most important reform should be to implement a "fool-proof electronic registration, voting, and counting system" for the 2006 general election.

So let's look at what is biometrics and how BVIS can play a major role in ensuring fair electoral process, and how it can be implemented for our next general election:

Why BVIS is essential for next election?
The system will ensure effective and fool-proof voter registration, voting, and counting procedure that no longer requires identification (ID) cards. Instead of IDs, identification of voters will only be made through a computerised facial and fingerprint biometric system.

This computerised biometric authentication procedure can be easily developed to adapt to the Bangladeshi voting system, thus, it can provide a solution to all poll problems, particularly fraud and counting irregularities. The system can be designed to combat regular election related problems that have plagued past Bangladesh General Elections such as flying vote, ghost voters, vote buying, dummy voters, multiple registrations, and slow voting process due to manual voter authentication. etc.

How will BVIS work?
BVIS can be utilised in three major areas in our election process:
1. Registration and identification process,
2. Voter authentication during election, and
3. Accurate vote counting or tally process

The whole procedure is simple. During the voter registration, the computer will take the picture and fingerprint of the voter for identification and filing purposes and include them electronically in the EC voter list. When the voter votes in the polling station during the election, the computer would again take his photo and fingerprints and compare it with millions of photos and fingerprint files in the list. Once the system recognises and identifies the voter, only then would he be allowed to vote.

When voting hours finally come to a close, the computer would then print the polling station's tally sheet. The computer will also securely store lists of voters who actually came to the polling station to an optical CD media which will be later used for vote recount or finding a match for potential multiple voters with other polling centers.

There's no question that this technology is what we need to eliminate all manner of cheating like the fraud vote, floating voters, and ballot manipulation. Candidates do not have to fear this technology and in fact appreciate it because it would cost them less to run for office once the system is in place.

Voter registration process
From the voter registration forms or directly from registrant, basic personal information such as name, address, birthday and gender will be entered into the voter registration computer screen. Voter's photo will be taken by a mini camera installed on the computer itself and his left and right thumbs will be scanned for prints. These data will then be filed at the EC central database. The entire voter population of Bangladesh can be enrolled over a 40-day period with biometric systems as it was done for 60 million voters of Nigerian presidential election in 2003.

Using the latest facial and fingerprint biometric technology, the system will not allow one person to register more than once as computers in every constituency will be able to recognise the face and the fingerprint of all those who had already registered. After the final match and compilation, if any multiple registration is found, EC can take punitive action such as -- take away the right to vote of the multiple registrant and/or him/them to prison. However, EC has to ensure that enough media publicity to inform the citizen of the new voter registration system and the punishment for the multiple or fraud registration.

This eliminates the first electoral irregularity -- floating and proxy or "ghost" voters.

In the actual voting, the same rule applies. Through the face and the fingerprint, the computer will be able to recognise the qualified voters in each constituency and ensure that they vote only once.

The voting process with biometrics I D
Below you can see the "BVIS step-by-step" process of voter identification using the biometrics technology during the general election. Most BVIS machines use similar procedures, with variations in the secure media used to activate the machines and the procedures for retrieving information. All BVIS machines will include backup batteries, so they can run for few hours during a power outage. Biometric scans stay in nonvolatile RAM, so they are not lost if the batteries die.

1. Voter arrives at polling station and lines up for their perspective booth.

2. Polling officer in each booth will first pre-register the voter to identify him as a qualified voter. Voter will be asked to scan his right thumb or left thumb to be scanned with a finger print scanner and a facial photograph will be taken of the voter with a digital camera at the same time.

3.The BVIS will then do a one-to-one and one-to-many match with the fingerprint and facial image of the voter against the distributed voter database installed in the biometric identification server at the polling station. If the BVIS check is okay and ensures that the voter has not yet tendered his vote, the voter is then given his ballot paper to enter the voting booth to cast his vote. The entire verification and match takes only 15 seconds or less per voter.

4. The BVIS will keep records of each voter entering the polling booths with their fingerprint, facial image and time-stamp of entry.

5. After the closing of the poll the BVIS will print out the Tally-Sheet or store the poling station data into a secured optical media to be compared later with other poling station to find possible match for multiple voting. The illicit voters involved in multiple voting will then be prosecuted according to EC law.

6. The BVIS ensures a proper vote count and the voter tally can be compared with the number of ballot in the voting box for that particular poling center, to ensure that there is no discrepancy. This will prevent any manipulation through ghost voting to increase the number of vote in any particular center.

It is important to emphasize that this BVIS is not a full fledged e-voting system and it will only protect us from fraud voting to ensure one-vote for one-person, thus, the actual ballots needs to be protected from any kind of manipulation from unscrupulous EC polling officers.

The Technology:
What is biometrics authentication?
Biometrics are automated methods of recognising a person based on a physiological or behavioral characteristic. Among the features measured are; face, fingerprints, hand geometry, handwriting, iris, retinal, vein, and voice.

Biometric technologies are becoming the foundation of an extensive array of highly secure identification and personal verification solutions. As the level of security breaches and transaction fraud increases, the need for highly secure identification and personal verification technologies is becoming apparent.

A typical biometric-based authentication applications may include biometrics input device, workstation, network, and domain access, single sign-on, application logon, data protection, remote access to resources and transaction security.

On the other hand, authentication is something you have, something you know, and something you are when you are when you and biometrics. Right now only authentication we have, involves human error and unconfirmed verification. Technology has always been there but the idea of using this technology for voter authentication was never there.

The idea behind whole voter authentication with biometrics is to eradicate fraud and multiple voting. People with ill intention do not like to get registered with face and fingerprint, making it a very discouraging system for the fraud voters.

Conclusion
Electoral fraud is a grave and growing threat to our democracy! It seems that most of the people crying out for election reform in Bangladesh are on the opposition. Why should this be? Election fraud has just as much potential to harm the party in power as the parties in opposition. What is important is that the country today must protect its right to vote orderly and honestly, and this technology can help us achieve this goal.

Mahboob ur Rahman is Managing Director of BASE Limited.