Building Electoral Integrity with a Biometric Voter Database

Before

19.6 M voters
Fragmented biometric voter database from legacy system
Contentious voters’ list

After

22.120 M voters
High quality deduplicated biometric voter database
No duplicate records

Search for a Trustworthy Biometric Voter Database

The 2017 presidential election in Kenya was supposed to highlight its modern all-in-one electoral system. Instead, the Supreme Court annulled the election, citing irregularities in the transmission of results.

In light of the events, the Kenyan Electoral Commission terminated its contract with the vendor. A tender was then opened to find a new supplier of the Kenyan Integrated Election Management System that will rectify the flaws of the previously implemented electoral biometrics and deliver trustworthy biometric voter database.

Integrate legacy system with a new electoral ABIS
Kenya’s Electoral Commission required the migration of the voters database notwithstanding the restrictions of the legacy license from the previous vendor.
Build a secure voter database
Old and new enrollees needed to be deduplicated, made more complicated by fragmented data collection. Only 4 months was allotted for the completion of the project from HW deployment to voters’ cards printing.

Cleaning Kenya’s Voter Database

Innovatrics partnered with partner to integrate ABIS 8 with the legacy system, wherein enrollment stations had Innovatrics SDK running on Android. Existing data of around 20 million voters was migrated from legacy system and different exports, while additional ones from from legacy enrollment stations needed to be reverse engineered. Due to time constraints, the migration and deduplication of old and new data were performed separately and completed in less than a month.

Server capacity was thus boosted, requiring additional ABIS installation. Manual adjudication and training were also provided. The scalable architecture allowed for the agile management of hardware capacity.

Fingerprint and Face Modality
Apart from new hardware, also new industry-leading electoral ABIS, featuring fingerprints and face modalities, was integrated with existing legacy database and hardware to meet the mandate of Kenya’s Electoral Commission.
Smooth Data Migration
Given the extensive legacy database (20M) and time pressure, data had to be imported quickly and correspondingly.
Extensive Deduplication
Not only text deduplication and deduplication using mostly fingers was applied, but also, face and double checking the data was also employed.

Reliable Voter's List for Election Integrity

Reliable Voter Verification for Election Integrity

The agile deployment of Innovatrics biometric technology aided the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) of Kenya to implement a cutting-edge electoral architecture that can deliver transparent and peaceful elections.

22 Million+ Records
New and old enrollees have been deduplicated, giving Kenya a complete and clean national voters’ list.
Clean and Transparent Voters’ List
The Supreme Court of Kenya ascertained that the technology deployed met the constitutional standards on election integrity, verifiability, security and transparency to guarantee accurate and verifiable results.
Agile Delivery
Although started in January, servers were only accessed in March – putting intense time pressure to complete the project for the August presidential elections. In fact, the final deduplication and adjudication took one month with 50 adjudicators working two shifts.

“The mission commends IEBC for the successful use of the technology in voter registration, voter identification, and the transmission of results.”
Head of the East Africa Community Observer Mission in Kenya
Jakaya Kikwete

The power of efficient biometric algorithm

Building Electoral Integrity with a Biometric Voter Database

ONE-PAGER Trusted Voter Registration

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Building Electoral Integrity with a Biometric Voter Database

Before

After

Search for a Trustworthy Biometric Voter Database

Cleaning Kenya’s Voter Database

Reliable Voter's List for Election Integrity

The power of efficient biometric algorithm

Solution Delivered in Record Time

Seamless Integration with 3rd-Party Data Sources

Data Migration from Legacy System and Others

ONE-PAGER Trusted Voter Registration

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