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The Chairperson of the National Elections Commission of Liberia has disclosed that biometric technology would not be used for the conduct of the October 10, 2023, election.
Davidetta Brown Lansanah, the Chairperson of the National Elections Commission of Liberia has disclosed that biometric technology would not be used for the conduct of the October 10, 2023, election.
The chairperson’s announcement comes despite the history of election rigging in the country. Election results in the past have been contested in the courts as Liberia’s manual voting systems have been prone to manipulations, human interventions, and fraud. There have been public protests against the existing system and demand for the use of technology to announce election results electronically, with minimum human interference. In the 2017 elections, the Supreme Court was obliged to prevent a constitutional crisis by saying that the electoral fraud was not big enough for a rerun of the then-2017 presidential election results. The 2017 elections in Liberia were deemed free and fair by international observers, but opposition parties alleged that the final voter roll was flawed by double registrations.
Also, Read;
https://trendsnafrica.com/liberia-elections-to-be-held-in-october/
https://trendsnafrica.com/liberian-president-weah-to-seek-re-election/
The NEC’s use of biometric systems is the first time in Liberia. The Commission is hoping that using the biometric voter registration process, it will improve the credibility of the elections process by weeding out double registrations. NEC Chair is silent on whether the more than 20,000 polling stations in the country will be interconnected to share registration centers to prevent any duplication.
