Revisiting the use of card reader in the 2015 elections (1)

“Identification of election technology that meets the public acceptance is as important as the election itself” – Burmester & Magkos, 2003 (Towards Secure and Practical E-Elections in the New Era)

The crux of this article was written a few weeks before the last presidential elections and was shared on my social media account. The heated passion at the time meant the message suffered series of refraction and diffraction as it travelled through partisan lenses. The elections were won and lost; most of my fears crystallized. With the card reader as a recurring subject at the election petitions tribunal, I think it is worth revisiting.

First off, by my training as a computer engineer, the use of technology in the electioneering process comes as a welcome development. I have always advocated the use of Information Technology in governance and in strengthening democratic processes/institutions. However, there are procedures for successful implementation of a people-centric technology that will radically change an important and sensitive process such as voting.

That said, INEC got it wrong ab initio by refusing to sort out the legal issues before deploying the technology. You do not rush to force a piece of technology on a process governed by an existing legislation without amending the relevant laws to reflect this. INEC didn’t do this; they missed the opportunity to do this, and so the card reader lost absolute and exclusive legitimacy without a legal backing. INEC should have known that Nigeria is not a one-man company where the owner can just decide to introduce a piece of technology that drastically alters the workflow process, without the needed stakeholder buy-in. No, in deploying public systems such as this, you must work from first principles – (1) Get the concept right; (2) Ensure it is within the legal/regulatory framework. Where the answer is “no”, then propose an amendment to the laws; (3) Get your design right; (4) Involve the stakeholders through all the stages; (5) Ensure you get your technical specification right to address critical issues such as security, integrity, confidentiality, etc; (6) Sufficient time for stakeholder testing to build trust and confidence.

E-government must derive legitimacy from an underlying legal framework that recognizes and supports its operations. In this case, the conduct of elections is regulated by the Electoral Act which operates in isolation, and in complete ignorance, of a piece of technology called the Card Reader. The only thing it emphasizes is the voter register. Once your name is on the register, and you have a valid proof (Voter Card) that you are the one, then no one should stop you from exercising your civic responsibility. As long as this law did not restrict one to a particular verification process, card reader can only serve as one of the means, but not the only means to verify the identity of someone whose name is on the voter register. The appeal court ruling in the case of APC Vs Agbaje, which the ruling party was a prime beneficiary, has already addressed this. The judge ruled that the card reader is alien to the Electoral Act, therefore elections cannot be cancelled on the basis of failure of it. Other judgments have also been in the same direction, except the curious case of the Rivers State elections tribunal that nullified the gubernatorial elections on the grounds of failure to stick to the card reader, yet about a third of House of Assembly elections held same day under same conditions were upheld.

It is noteworthy to mention that INEC, in apparent realization of the need for a contingency arrangement, decided to provide incident forms to allow voters whose names appear on the voter register but who had challenges with the card reader to vote and log in the incidence. This was to ensure that valid voters were not disenfranchised on the grounds of failure of technology.

In introducing a new technology, it is always important to learn from the experience of others. In 2005, e-voting was deployed in the Bundestag election (Germany). In 2009, Joachim Weisner and his son Ulrich challenged this in court, arguing that relying on the e-voting machines amounted to “blind trust” in the machines, since they could not verify the inner workings or the integrity of the system. Germany’s federal Constitutional Court agreed with them and ruled that the use of e-voting was unconstitutional. That is a clear case where failure to get legislative backing for a technology could make it lose legitimacy. Fortunately, they didn’t nullify the elections, but they reverted to paper voting thereafter.

For a public system to be declared fit, it is expected to go through a robust multi-stakeholder testing process to establish the system’s integrity, efficiency, accuracy, reliability, and security. In the case of INEC’s card reader, apart from the few public demonstrations and the poorly attended mock elections, I am not quite sure how well the stakeholders (political parties, civil society organizations, etc) were carried along right from the conceptualization, the alpha and beta designs, to deployment.

Also, a robust testing process should have included independent professional organizations that can further add credence to the integrity of the testing process. Did INEC involve the Nigerian Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers? Did they involve the Nigeria Computer Society? Did they work with the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology? Did INEC involve the Standards Organization of Nigeria? We also have respected COREN-registered computer engineers, electronic engineers, quality engineers, reliability engineers, system testers, etc who could have been invited to robustly assess the system and processes. Did INEC do any of these? I’m not quite sure they did. If they did, most of the technical challenges they had with the system could have been spotted in good time for correction. These professionals being part of the testing process would have deepened the whole process of ensuring the transparency, efficiency, effectiveness and integrity of the system. If this was done, it would have gone a long way in building public trust in the new system. Public trust is crucial to the acceptability of any new system; it is important to carry them along in every single process.

In the ruling of the German Constitutional Court cited above, the judge held that: “In a republic, elections are a matter for the entire people and a joint concern of all citizens. Consequently, the monitoring of the election procedure must also be a matter for and a task of the citizen. Each citizen must be able to comprehend and verify the central steps in the elections.” I find this very instructive.

R. Tombari Sibe