Elections Commission starts work on establishing fingerprint reading system

Elections Commission (EC) has started work on the establishment of a fingerprint reading system.

Speaking to Sun Online, President of the EC Fuad Thaufeeq said that work began to set up a fingerprint reading system about a month ago and that it is part of the efforts to increase the credibility of the political party membership registry.

He said that once the mechanism is fully functional, the commission will have a comprehensive fingerprint database capable of verifying the validity of fingerprints.

“Although it [including fingerprints in party membership forms] has been halted, we are assuming that we can make use of this once the Political Parties Act comes into force. When the mechanism is in place, we can also use it to revise the political party [membership] registry. We are doing this for the long-term,” said Fuad.

He said that in addition to existing fingerprint recognition hardware, the commission’s IT department is currently working on acquiring more such machines and that once complete, the mechanism can further be used to verify the voter registry.

“Philippines, Jamaica, this type of systems are used in these counties as well. They use it to increase validity of the voter registry and so on. The commission thinks that this will be a successful project. We think that this will solve major problems we face during voting,” said Fuad.

He said that the system will not be costly and that all costs will be borne by the EC. The commission hopes that the mechanism will be in place before the presidential elections next year.

EC had earlier faced criticism from political parties following their regulation to make applicants stamp their fingerprint on application forms mandatory. Independent Commissions Committee of the Parliament had ordered that the party registration application form will not need the applicants’ fingerprints, citing that the EC did not have the means to verify the prints.