Journals Proceedings

Abstract

Electioneering process in many developing countries results in election frauds such as double registration, ballot stuffing, under-age voting and other forms of election drawbacks during registration of voters and casting of votes by eligible voters. In some developing countries, electronic biometric registration and verification system have been introduced during the registration and verification of voters. In many cases, some of the genuine registered voters were not recognized by the biometric machine. However, the rules and regulations pertaining to the elections stipulated that a voter would not be allowed to vote until he/she had been registered and verified. This means that before a voter could be allowed to cast his/ her vote, the biometric machine is supposed to recognize him/her first. Furthermore, some citizens that are physically challenged would also be denied the opportunities of exercising their franchise because the system used for the registration made use of fingerprint only. A Multi-modal biometric system is designed to eradicate the problem of eligible registered voters being disenfranchised by the current biometric system. This work presents a multi modal system that allows citizens to use their iris and fingerprint to go through the registration and verification process instead of their fingerprints alone as in the case of Nigeria electioneering process. The introduction of this 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 electioneering processes.