Uganda is richer in poverty than in realised wealth. Virtually all kinds of poverty is recognizable in the country: environmental poverty, ecological poverty, ethical poverty, moral poverty, intellectual poverty, and technical poverty. However, since the country is said to boast of the youngest population in the world, we can say that it is reproductively (or biologically) rich. It is also very rich in minerals such as gold, iron, uranium and rare earth minerals to name but a few.
In this article I want to focus on the technical poverty of UGANDANs with reference to elections. Uganda imports virtually all its technical capacity from outside in all spheres of its economy.
Even when the NRM government says it is manufacturing vehicles, the truth is that it is assembling vehicles using parts imported from outside.
Even Biometric machines used in elections are imported from countries such as China or Germany.
The first time Uganda used Biometric machines in voting was 2016 for Presidential and Parliamentary elections. While it was marketed by power as a means to improve the electoral process,c which has been messy since 1996, when President Tibuhaburwa Museveni offered himself to the electorate, the continuing involvement of the police and army in the processes, combined with the President’s declaration in Seeta, Mukono then that he is like a quarter pin of a bicycle that goes in by knocking and that, therefore, a mere piece of paper (the ballot paper) cannot remove him from power, it was unlikely that Biometric voting would change the situation. However, the President claimed that in the the 2021 Presidential elections the National Unity Platform stole his 1,000, 000 votes. He later raised the figure to 2,700,000 million votes towards the 2026 Presidential and Parliamentary elections. This suggested that Biometric voting could not eliminate vote theft.
As if this is not enough, the ruling party claims it has a membership of of just over 20 million, almost half of the population of Uganda. When the party engaged in registering its members in readiness for the 2026 Presidential and Parliamentary elections, it included children of 17 and 16. years of age. This could explain why NRM rallies are dominated by school children. However, this is an advancement over what used to happen in the past. In the past, all men, women, children and even the unborn, were compelled to belong to NRM. They did not need to choose where to belong. This was done for them, which was of course disrespect for Ugandans. The question now is: can biiometric voting defeat unscrupulous behavior of politicians who think, believe and are convinced that only them must hold political office and rule the country?
Biometric voting is a system that uses unique physical characteristics, such as fingerprints, facial recognition, or iris scans, to identify and verify voters. It is a very expensive approach to voting for a poor country still faced with failure to provide quality education and health services; to improve agriculture, construct good roads and ensure suitable infrastructure in all sheres of the economy.
Let me now look at the strengths and weaknesses of Biometric voting in general. But let me make it clear that there is no single biometric system.
Many biometric systems exist. There are two main types of biometric systems: the physiological biometric system, based on physical characteristics such as fingerprints and face shape; and the behavioural biometric system, based onunique behavioural characteristics such as voice and gate. Within the two broad categories, there are many specific types, with fingerprints, facial recognition, voice recognition, and eye iris and retina recognition being the most common examples.
Fingerprints is the most widely used. It is the one that was used in the earlier NRM-organized elections.
Strengths of Biometric Voting
1. Biometric voting improves voter identification by accurately identifying voters, reducing the risk of impersonationcand multiple voting.
2. Biometric voting raises efficiency of the voting process by speeding up the voting process, and reducing queues and waiting time.
3. Biometric voting raises security of the voting process by making it difficult to fake or manipulate date, which makes it easy to verify voter identity
4. Biometric voting fraudulence in the voting process by detecting and preventing multiple voting times or impersonation.
Weaknesses of Biometric Voting
There are many more weaknesses of Biometric Voting than its strengths. Indeed it is possible for an unscrupulous person of power to prefer biometric voting because of its weaknesses rather than its strengths. This is more likely where justice, freedom and democracy are excluded as much as possible from the democratization process and power, power retention, glory, and wealth are desired far more by those in power than providing services, justice, freedom and democracy to the people.
Thus we have the following weaknesses of biometric voting:
1. Biometric systems are extremely exprnsive since it requires significant investment in terms of hardware, software and training. The costs often up where those involved in the procurement process and training are corrupt and want to maximize gains from the voting process as they possibly can. Therefore, corruption free society is needed so that the country using biometric voting can protect the tax payers from being fleeced by unscrupulous people in government.
2. Biometric systems are prone to technical failures, including errors in fingerprint recognition and systems failure. When the technical issues arise several voters may be excluded from the voting.
3. Biometric data is sensitive and requires robust security measures are needed to protect it from unauthorized people accessing or breeching it. For example, we learn’t in the press that during the last Presidential and Parliamentary elections in Kenya, which brought William Ruto to power, Venezuelan crooks were imported into the country and were used to access data and manipulate in favour of Ruto. In the process the hand of the man in charge of the data was cut off to get his fingerprints.
4. Inadvertent disenfranchisement of voters can occur where voters are unfamiliar with the technology, or in the case of the elderly and the disabled people. If it were queueing they would certainly not miss the voting
5. Dependency on an unfamiliar technology, biometric voting systems,in a country where electricity supply is not stable can eliminate very many voters from voting.. In countries where the governors are politically corrupt and have their people or supporters in control of electricity supply, it is possible to deny rlectrity from a place dominated by voters that support rival political candidates. It is an easy way to deny people their right to choose those they want to lead them. Even network failures and other technical failures may confound the problem, which may benefit those in power.
6. Lack of transparency is a serious issue in voting using biometric systems. In a country s where transparency and accountability are a joint anathema to the governors, voters verifying the accuracy of the voting process duringg or after the voting can be next to impossible. This leaves the managers of the voting process to announce anything or any candidate as winner or loser when on the ground the loser is the winner and the winner is the loser. This gives the managers of the elections a lot of powe to manipulate the results and to be more sovereign than the people. In Uganda many constuencies complained the people they did not elect were the ones who were declared winners and those they elected were declared losers.
7. Bias is more likely than not to characterize biometric voting. Biometric systems may be biased if the data used to train the algorithms is not representative of the population, leading to inaccurate identifications or exclusions.It is worse where exclusion of voters is an objective of power
Questions to Address
If the government of Uganda thinks, believes and is convinced that biometric voting can improve the Electoral process, then it must quickly provide answers to these questions:
1. How can Uganda address the technical and financial challenges associated with implementing biometric voting?
2. What measures can be taken to ensure the security and transparency of biometric data?
How can biometric voting be designed to be more inclusive and accessible to all voters, particularly those in rural or disadvantaged areas?
Conclusion
Therefore, while it may be good to try be modern, modernity may exclude many people from the democratization process. In countries where political apartheid is reversed, this serves the purpose of ultimately power getting the people it wants to work in his or her system. It does not matter how many people have been excluded from voting so long he or she retains power. It is not useful to put too much faith in biometric voting because ultimately it belongs to the one who organizes the elections, counts the votes and declares winners and losers. That is the government. If it wants to perpetually rule and access resources and power uninterruptedly,c the biometric system becomes a tool of power and continuity. It has nothing to to do with people’s craze for justice, freedom and democracy.
For God and My Country
Bantu MEDIA 