By Garmah Lomoh|Contributor
A team of IT experts from the Economic community of West African States (ECOWAS) arrived in Liberia on Tuesday October 27,2020, for the purpose of cleaning up the voter’s roll.
Two of the experts are from Nigeria and the head of delegation from Ghana, Chidi Nwafor were all hired by ECOWAS.
While one expert was also hired from Kenya by UNDP to collaborate with team from both Nigeria and Ghana along with NEC team out the cleaning up of the voter roll.
Mr. Chidi Nwafor, head of the ECOWAS technical team at the NEC press conference Tuesday October 27, 2020 promised to be open and transparent to the public on issues and findings from the voter roll cleanup process.
Chidi Nwafor said: “Our term of reference is connected to the voter roll. Our idea is to work with NEC to access what they have done on the issue and make sure they are solved to our own ability. We will have to be open and transparent to the public on our work.
“If we see anything we cannot solve, we will also note it with the Commission, the political parties and allow them make a decision at the policy level. Any issue no matter how stupid it may seem, we will look at, we will be open to our bosses, the NEC and the political parties.”
At the same time, NEC chair has announced that the commencement of the exhibition of provisional voter roll begins Wednesday and ends on October 31, 2020.
CPP happy now?
The cleaning up of the voter roll is one of the pressing need or demands of the four collaborating Political parties (CPP) which took them to the Supreme Court to petitioned the court to issue a writ of Mandamus on the NEC but the Chamber Justice Sie-A-Nyene G. Yuoh declined to issue the writ.
After the Chamber Justice declined to issue the writ of Mandamus, the CPP therefore amended their petition and took an appeal to the full Bench of the Supreme Court.
Cleaning up of the voter roll will be conducted in the present of political parties, IT Representatives but it remains unclear whether the media and civil organizations will be invited to observe the process.
In a twenty-nine count petition writ of Mandamus filed by the Collaborating political parties which prompted the ECOWAS report states that the provisional Registration Roll displayed at the registration centers throughout the country, claimed a good total 2,182,956 registered voters.
A writ of Mandamus is a court order compelling someone to execute a duty that they are legally obligated to complete.
Count eight of the CPP petition about the ECOWAS report or recommendation says the exercise, and before the final roll was published, a total of 170,000 suspected duplicate voters extracted, 4,567 of which were confirmed to report a total of 2,183,629 voters were published on the final voters roll, the FRR 30 days to the election on September 11,2017.
ECOWAS report
Given these facts, if 170,000 suspected duplicates were removed from the provisional Registration Roll, the total number of voters on the FRR ought to have been 2,012,956, and 2,183,629 voters as reported by NEC.
The ECOWAS recommendation Captured by the CPP in count eight of their motion said hence the conclusion is compelling and inescapable that the 170,000 suspected duplicates were never extracted from the voters roll and roll and remain there up to date rendering the FRR defective and unfit to lay a basis for elections.
Count nine of the CPP petition disclosed that ECOWAS report also started that the time it gained access to the NEC data base Dec 12,2017, the total number of registered voters was 2,183,629 and this equals the total registered votes declared by the NEC(FFR total) which also equals the total OMR forms said have been returned from the field and handed over to the data center for processing.
According to their petition, since the exhibition of the provisional voters Roll was carried on the 12th of June 2017, the total valid registered voters the team viewed in the database as at this date, was 2,045, 483.
From said analysis, the ECOWAS report concluded that between the time of the exhibition of the Provisional Registration Roll (PRR) and declaring the Final Registration Roll(FRR), a total of 138,146 records were added to the voter roll something the petitioner’s says that there is no evidence up to date that these additional 138,146 voters added to the FRR have been removed from the voters roll.
Petitioner count ten says revealed ECOWAS report which stated that the technology used by the NEC cannot identify and remove duplicated voters from the FRR.
That the non-biometric nature of the Voter Roll makes it very difficult to carry out de- duplication despite the limitation of the OMR technology, extending it’s functionalities a little more to capture two fingerprints (thumb prints preferably) would have help for de-duplication.
Digitizing those prints, using automated fingerprints identification system (AFIS) would have help tremendously the ECOWAS report said.
It further added that the semi automated method used could not have really help with cleaning the voter roll adding that someone who intentionally wants to commit multiple registration would most likely not used the same name multiple times.
In addition to this, the de-duplication method used would have exposed the data to false rejection those that are duplicates but seemingly look alike and are therefore removed and false acceptance letter hose that are duplicates but one reason or another were not removed.
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