Transforming Voters Registration Paradigm in Tanzania, The Shift from OMR to BVR

Voter registration is very important towards election processes especially in most of developing countries such as Tanzania. Electioneering process normally leads to election fraud such as double registration and other forms of election drawbacks during registration of voters and casting of votes by eligible voters. For the election to be fair in both contesting parties and accurate then needs to have a known number of voters eligible to cast their votes. The electoral roll is usually constructed by means of a voter registration system that compiles voters data. In the past ended Tanzanian elections, Optical Mark Recognition registration and verification system was introduced during the registration and verification of voters. It was observed on the elections day that some of the genuine registered voters were not recognized by the electoral officers hence they were disfranchised from voting which is against the constitutional rights of every Tanzanian who had reached the age of eighteen at the time of the registration of voters. This was caused due to various problems like a voter to have moved in a different place from where he/she registered and many others. The current system for voter registration has got many deficiencies such as lack of effective methods to prevent impersonation, multiple registrations and alterations on voter information. In this paper the proposed system for voter registration increases the accuracy of the current systems. Here the registration is carried out by means of biometric voter registration (BVR). Biometric Voter Registration is used to prevent impersonation, detect multiple registrations from the same person and protect from alterations the registration information. This system will also help before a voter could be allowed to cast his / her vote the biometric machine will be supposed to recognize him/her first. This paper uses a multi scan system that allows citizens to use different parts of their bodies to go through the registration and verification process, here we shall observe the use of both fingerprint, facial and signature types of recognition techniques. The introduction of this proposed system for general elections is expected to create room for full participation of all eligible voters, eliminate multiple voting and also increase the confidence of the people in Tanzania in the electioneering process.