Friday, November 16, 2012

At least the kids can't vote twice - Ghana edition

Image accompanies this article in Ghana's Daily Guide


Minors Captured In Biometric Voter Register A Big Challenge For EC – Dr Afari-Gyan (Ghana.gov)
He said the biometric verification machine cannot determine who is a minor or a foreigner and that examination of images of those captured during the biometric registration shows that minors were registered all over the country.
This brings up several ID issues.

Since there is no precise physiological indication of age, it is important to register children when they are born.

Some non-trivial proportion of the world's individuals don't actually know how old they are.

What policies were in place during the voter registration process?

It's almost impossible to conceive that the enrollment software didn't in some way note the electoral worker responsible for each enrollment. Is there any correlation between the registrants that seem obviously to be around twelve years old and the worker responsible for the registration?

On the positive side, with a well-functioning biometric voter system at least the kids can't vote twice.

See:
At Least the Kids Can't Vote Twice in ARMM, Philippines
Biometrics "Fix" Identity