By Garmah Never Lomo, garmahlomo@gmail.com
A team of IT experts from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) are in Liberia to join NEC in cleaning the national voter roll, which has been a key demand of the Collaborating Political Parties (CPP) and other pro-democracy groups.
The ECOWAS team arrived in the country on Tuesday October 27, 2020, promising to do their best in carrying out the exercise.
Two of the experts are from Nigeria and the head of delegation is from Ghana, Chidi Nwafor and they were all hired by ECOWAS.
One expert was also hired from Kenya by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to collaborate with team from both Nigeria and Ghana along with NEC team in the cleaning up of Liberia’s voter roll.
The arrival of the ECOWAS experts comes as the CPP announced the suspension of their planned October 28 street protest.
The clean-up is one of the pressing demands of the four collaborating Political parties (CPP) with 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 first declined to issue it.
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 presence of political parties’ IT Representatives but whether the media and civil organizations will be invited to observe the process is yet to be known.
A twenty-nine-count petition writ of Mandamus filed by the CPP pointed to the ECOWAS report of 2017, which 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.
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.
On the other hands in a joint resolution by the Senate and House of Representatives said they are mindful of the defective nature of the 2017 FRR as acknowledged by the Supreme Court and revealed by the ECOWAS report, in a joint resolution adopted by the Senate and House of Representatives, Ordered the NEC to clean the voter roll among other directives as follows:
That considering that the authenticity and credibility of the 2017 FRR continues to be a source of speculation by the political parties and Civil society Organizations involved with the electoral process, a clan up process of the 2017 FRR shall be conducted by NEC with the involvement of political parties and other stakeholders in order to enhance the legitimacy and authenticity of the 2017 FRR for use of the 2020 senatorial elections.
That due to the special circumstances appertaining to the 2020 senatorial election and referendum, the NEC shall give written progress report every third (30) days to the legislature and physically appear to react to concerns of the legislature so as to ensure that all problems faced by the NEC will be promptly resolved and that the senatorial election and referendum will be held on December 8, 2020 among several others which the NEC has ignored and decided to do what pleases them.