According to local media reports, the governor election in Anambra State of Nigeria on November 6 was severely affected by the failure of the biometric voter authentication system, causing many voters to retire home without voting.

According to Premium Times, due to the failure of the dual-mode voter authentication system (BVAS), which uses fingerprints and facial biometrics to authenticate voters, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announced that the poll was inconclusive because many voters on Saturday He got up to fulfill his civic duties but failed to do so.

Although voting will continue in certain areas of the state on Sunday, November 7, the election referee has set November 9 as the completion date for the voting activities in the Isiala Local Government District. The report added that due to lack of sufficient voting materials and other irregularities, Ishiala's vote could not be conducted.

Vanguard wrote in its own report that Anambra State INEC Commissioner Dr. Nkwachukwu Orji confirmed that due to software bugs, many polling stations in the state noticed BVAS failures, forcing the election management agency to review the situation on the afternoon of November 6.

The media mentioned that senior officials such as Federal Minister of Labor and Employment Chris Ngige and All Progressive Grand Alliance candidates faced difficulties in gaining recognition at polling stations.

At the same time, in another report, The Quality Times quoted a diplomat and a legislator as expressing concern about the failure of the BVAS, saying that it caused many voters to wait for a long time, and some people were unable to vote in the end. .

Officials accused INEC of “deliberate sabotage” and wondered why the agency failed to commit to correct some of the failures in the BVAS system witnessed during the renewed polls in Delta. They said it would be better if voter certification was done manually.

At the same time, in stark contrast to reports of biometric system malfunctions, Nkem Okeke, Lieutenant Governor of Anambra State, told the Telegraph that he had never seen an election as smooth as the state’s November 6th. He said that the B​​VAS system is running well and congratulated INEC.

"This is probably the smoothest process I have ever seen. Before, I had a problem with my fingerprint. The machine could not recognize my fingerprint, but this fingerprint was recognized very well. It didn't even take a second before that. It was very It's going well, you can see people voting, it's peaceful," Oakke said.

According to the RFE/RL report, on October 17, North Macedonians voted for local representatives in a poll for the first introduction of biometric technology.

Among 1.8 million voters, fingerprint readers were used to identify 1.8 million voters voted by local officials in 80 cities and the 10 cities that make up the country's capital. In the first round of voting, 34 mayors were elected.

According to Trend reports, the second round of elections was held in 44 cities, and 1,353,990 citizens were eligible to vote in 2,481 polling stations.

Mint wrote that officials of the election commission in Bihar, India, are using a video analytics system to ensure the transparency of the panchayat elections there.

This is the country's first election using a video analysis system.

The report added that the system is provided by the artificial intelligence company Staqu and is designed to ensure that the electronic voting machine (EVM) is error-free and does not manipulate the counting of votes.

The system runs on its proprietary video analysis solution, uses optical character recognition (OCR) and text recognition to identify candidates, and counts votes directly from the camera by monitoring the EVM screen.

According to Mint, the State Electoral Commission also provides fingerprint biometric readers to identify voters during voting.

Africa | Biometrics | Election | Identity Verification | India | Nigeria | North Macedonia | Optical Character Recognition | Video Analysis | Voter Registration

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