Voter Registration in Biometrics

                                    Voting is one area that ICT has a direct impact on, and it is also an area that is fatefully important in politics. African elections have been disputed many times before by allegations of election supports. Can we therefore use electronic voting to counter this problem? E-voting improves the voting and together with processes. For instance polling stations don’t run out of paper during voting because there are none used. A computer takes milliseconds to count all the votes and tabulate them. However, even with these advantages, e-voting is not impervious to hacks and viruses. There are hackers out there who can hack into any system regardless of how “secure” the system is said to be. So is e-voting the complete answer to the supports allegations issue, maybe not.

Voter registration

                                 The use of biometric registration has been mentioned a number of times in Zimbabwe. Biometric registration will get better the quality of voter’s roll. One way it does this is by avoiding “zombie voting”. This is where a person votes using the name of a dead person which is still in the voter’s roll. Currently the name of a person who dies is not mechanically removed from the voters roll.

Explaining Biometrics: 

                                Biometrics is essentially a science that identifies a person using some biological feature. Examples of such features are fingerprints, palm print, eye iris and voice. The use of Biometric during listing uses fingerprints and takes very little time to register a voter. The Zimbabwean government has previously called for the use of this expertise in the 2018 elections. This follows the constraints posed by the current listing system, it simply takes too long. Ghana and Zambia are some the African countries that have adopted Biometrics for voter listing. While Sierra Leone successfully implemented the system during their 2012 elections.

But what are the risks linked with Biometric voting?

                                While the use of biometrics has great compensation these systems are still not foolproof. Biometric systems exchange analog information (fingerprint pattern) into digital information (0s and 1s) that computers can store and read. Though it is difficult, digital data captured from biometrics systems can still be sniffed along the wires of unconfident networks and replayed for malevolent access (voting). So YES, biometrics speed up the registration development AND is better than the current registration progression use, BUT it still is NOT foolproof.

                                The mentioned how the Arab spring in Tunisia was helped by social media. People were rallied to join a exhibition against the government via Facebook and Twitter. Public information shared through social networking websites play an significant role in modern day politics, and in activism. One Facebook page where Zimbabwean politics is greatly talked about is Baba Jukwa. Though the Facebook page is quite contentious it still does pose a great political authority.

                                 This is not an comprehensive discussion; we would like to hear from our readers what you think as regards the impact of ICT on African politics, and how ICT can be used to get better Zimbabwean politics.