The card reader has been hailed as
the antidote to election rigging in emerging democracies. It has been
extensively used in a number of emerging democracies in Africa with positive
reports of its contributory role in stemming election rigging.
The card reader, however, has its
limitations even as Mr. Kayode Idowu, the chief press secretary to Prof.
Attahiru Jega, the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission,
INEC said in an interview with Vanguard.
Though the card reader cannot be
fooled by a PVC, it, however, would fail when all the human components in the
polling unit agree to disregard it or conspire against the device.
“The way INEC has designed the Card
Reader, it will only take a community conspiracy for the system to be
manipulated and if that happens there is nothing anybody can do about it and it
will not be the fault of INEC because it is designed in such a way that it is
unique. Number one it has a voice prompt which will speak out loudly from the
speaker if a voter is accredited or not the moment the finger print is placed
on it.
What it then means is that for there
to be any manipulation at the polling centre, all the people there including
the agents of the political parties, the observers and INEC staff will be in
agreement to subvert the process in favour of one political party.
Human
components
The human components of the polling
process at the unit include the voter, the political party agents who are there
to protect the interests of their candidates, election observers, security
agents and journalists.
All of them would have to agree to
disregard the prompt of the card reader on the validity or otherwise of the PVC
to enable a voter to proceed to vote or not.
Even if they all disregard the card
reader where it is detected that someone has presented a card not belonging to
him and he is allowed to vote, the card reader would only transmit the number
of those who passed its biometric verification to the central server.
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