Amid reports of violence during the ongoing biometric voter registratron, the National Elections Commission has condemned such acts.
One of the areas where such a report has emerged from is Montserrado County District # 10, from where the local Daily Observer newspaper has reported four days of violence broke out over the weekend in the he Old Road Community, especially in the Chugbor and Gaye Town areas in Monrovia Sinkor suburb.
There have been claims and counter claims by the sitting Representative of the District, Yekeh Kolubah and the ruling CDC party about who instigated the recent violence.
A press release issued on Sunday, March 26, 2023 says NEC “condemns in the strongest term possible those involved in acts of violence perpetuated during the voter registration process and commend the Liberia National Police through the Ministry of Justice for their rapid response in addressing the situation.”
NEC says duplicate registration will be detected by the Biometric system
Meanwhile, the NEC has alleyed fear of the possibility of multiple registration during the ongoing BVR process in a press statement released over the weekend.
PRESS STATEMENT
“MONROVIA, 26 March 2023, Sunday: The National Elections Commission (NEC), says that the biometric registration system is designed in a way that any duplicate registration will be detected during the biometric adjudication process through the Central Management System and the voter information of registrants involved will be deactivated.
At the end of the first phase of the process, all data from the 1,065 Voter Registration Centers in Bomi, Gbarpolu, Grand Bassa, Grand Cape Mount, Margibi, and Montserrado Counties will be synchronized through the biometric servers where the deduplication process will commence. The system is very efficient at comparing millions of biometric samples which will facilitate the detection of any duplicate registration across the Commission’s database of registered voters. Any registrant involved in duplicate registration will have to ratify the issue with the Commission before his/her information can be included on the Voter Registration Roll.
The NEC emphasized that it is a crime to register or attempt to register more than once and that those involved are taking risks, because they will be exposed through the biometric system, and their information will subsequently be reported to the Ministry of Justice for Persecution.
The Commission further says that the objective for the migration from the Optical Mark Recognition system to the Biometric Voter Registration system is to have a credible voter roll, void of duplicate registration by using unique human physical characteristics. This is why the Commission is capturing biometric data of registrants — thumbprint and face.”