Liberia: Voter Cards “Will Not Be Punched,” NEC Says

Davidetta Browne-Lansanah, the Chairperson of the National Elections Commission (NEC), has reiterated that the demands from the opposition Unity Party calling for the  “punching of biometric voter cards on election Day” is impossible.

“These cards will not be punched. They are designed to last between 5 to 10 years due to their durability. It's not just about the cards; it’s the entire biometric process that has cost Liberia more than 12 million United States dollars,” Lansanah asserted. 

“We have consistently informed Liberians that these cards will not be punched,” she said. “There is no card verification process. Had the government allocated the US$91 million, we might have had card verification, enabling electronic voting.”

The position of the electoral body chair comes after she was asked by journalists on Tuesday to give the rationale behind her decision, which she has remained constant on.

The punching, as requested by the opposition Unity Party, is the process of electronically reading or verifying the information stored on the biometric voter card. This is usually carried out using specialized equipment that reads the biometric data on the card, such as fingerprint scanners or facial recognition devices. 

With the previous versions of Liberian voter cards, which were laminated, the NEC perforated (hole-punched) the cards immediately after handing a voter a ballot paper, as proof that the voter’s cards had been used in that election. Now, with the use of biometric voter cards in a manual voting process, no hole-punching means no verification that a card has already been used. Coupled with the late release of the final voter registration roll, the Unity Party believes that the possibility of double voting and other electoral irregularities exists. 

The Unity Party has told the electoral body that it has serious concerns about its  decision not to grant its request to punch voter registration cards during the October 10 polls, which would be in line with “Step 3, Section 7 of the Voting Steps of the Polling and Counting Manual for Staff.”

The NEC’s refusal, the Unity Party noted, has sparked considerable apprehension within “their party and the wider public concerning the authenticity and integrity of the electoral process.”

“The bedrock of any democratic society lies in the credibility of its elections, and we firmly believe that the biometric voter registration system, undertaken by the NEC, should be the cornerstone of this credibility,” the Unity Party said in its communication.

“However, the inability of this system to verify and enable electronic voting has left us with an Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) process in disguise, essentially turning what should have been a genuine biometric system into a manual one.

“Our primary concern is that this manual voting process, devoid of biometric verification, renders the 2023 legislative and presidential elections susceptible to fraudulent activities,” the letter said. “The decision not to punch VR cards after voting further exacerbates this concern.”

The Unity Party also noted that the only apparent difference between the current voter cards and previous ones is the change in material from plastic to polyethylene chloride. 

They argued that this seemingly minor change has significant implications for the transparency and credibility of the electoral process.

The Unity Party letter also noted that it has multiple reports of several voter cards that carry the signature of the electoral body chairperson but lack the names and photos of the cardholders. 

This issue, the UP added, raised serious doubts about the validity of the 2023 Voter Registration cards and, by extension, the credibility of the impending elections.

“We firmly believe that the integrity of our electoral process is paramount and should not be compromised in any way,” the Unity Party stressed. “In light of the gravity of this situation, we request that the National Elections Commission provide an immediate and comprehensive explanation for the existence and distribution of these illegal Voter Registration cards and reconsider its decision not to punch cards after voting, as has been the practice in previous elections.”