Global Development: Views from the Center

 

Democracy and Development: The Spread of Biometric Voter Rolls

June 3, 2011


This post is joint with Caroline Decker

The application of biometrics to promote development and democratization is proceeding rapidly in the developing world—and largely below the radar of the media and development experts in high-income countries. Monitoring press releases on biometrics with the help of a news Google alert, I’ve been struck by the astonishing spread of this technology for use in voter registration in developing countries… Nepal, Zambia, Ghana, to name just three and ongoing cases.

Related Working Paper

Most recently, Gabon announced plans to introduce a biometric voter roll in advance of the next election:  the opposition parties have been urging this for years.  The election is due in December 2011, but the President is to seek a court ruling on its deferral to 2012 to allow for the orderly introduction of biometrics.  The proposal has been supported by a group of NGOs and associations, as well as the Secretary General of one of the main opposition parties.  Bolivia provides an example of what can be done to increase political inclusion.  Over 5 million people were enrolled in 2009 within a period of 76 days by some 3,000 enrolment stations, increasing the voter roll by an astonishing 2 million people.  The main drivers were the opposition parties, which were reluctant to contest an election with the old, discredited, roll.  The exercise was very successful, in the assessment by the Carter Center.
These are great investments in strengthening democratic governance, but they are not cheap, especially if they have to be done hastily.  Bolivia’s cost some $75 million, about $15 per voter.  Gabon’s estimate for a fast-track registration is 90 million Euros; a slower exercise taking about a year would save a third of the cost. Even allowing for the sparseness of the population 60 million Euros is still high. Considering that Gabon’s population is only 1.5 million the cost works out to more than $100 per voter.

Voter registration is too valuable to be confined to elections.  I believe such systems should also be used to set the basis for a permanent system of citizen identification which could support a wide range of public and private services. Many cases, including in Nigeria, Pakistan, Mexico, South Africa, Malawi, India and elsewhere, show how a biometrics can underpin an identification system that can help to improve the functioning of the economy.  Financial access can be broadened and a range of government payments can be rationalized.  Eliminating payments to ghost workers, pensioners and claimants can probably easily pay for the registration costs in a few years; the technology opens up the possibility of dramatically reducing corruption in developmental transfer programs. (For more information see my paper on biometrics in cash-transfer programs). Payment costs will also fall over time as biometric identification is fully integrated into electronic payment mechanisms.

Here is an area in which advances in political and economic participation can go hand in hand.

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One Response to “Democracy and Development: The Spread of Biometric Voter Rolls”

  1. Joe Ryan :
    June 15th, 2011 at 1:49 am

    This article’s Pakistan link refers to the system for identifying beneficiaries for relief payments after the 2010 floods.

    As Gelb and Decker’s longer paper explains, the biometric database that the identification system is based on had been set up starting in 2000 for Pakistan’s Computerized National Identity Card, which ultimately should reach the entire population over 18.

    It is worth noting the other key piece of infrastructure for the flood relief program: the consumer payments system that had been put in place by the private banks that have emerged since the late-1990s liberalization of the formerly nationalized banking industry. The success of the new banks is also attributed in part to the professional workforce coming out of the Lahore University of Management Sciences, founding privately in 1982.

    It was apparently dissatisfaction with relief mechanisms for victims of the 2005 earthquake that led the government to turn to one of these banks, UBL, for a payments solution for the resettlement grants to displaced families returning to their homes in Malakand Division in mid-2009.

    According to UBL, it drew the assignment on the afternoon of May 28. After getting central bank and Visa International approval and manufacturing the cards, UBL started distributing Visa-brand debit cards linked to UBL bank accounts to thousands of IDP families in the Jalozai camp outside Peshawar on June 9. (NB: That is PDQ.) By July 3rd, over 69,000 debit cards had been used to withdraw over one billion rupees ($12 million) in cash grants. Over 300,000 cards were eventually distributed.

    Experience with this approach was good enough to use it again on a larger scale in 2010 for the flood victims.

    In the meantime, a third piece of social support infrastructure is coming into place — the “Poverty Scorecard,” an inexpensive survey instrument that ranks families by economic status for purposes of poverty targeting. The government should complete the drive to reach over 25 million families with this instrument in the next couple months.

    Once the Poverty Scorecard database is in place along with the identity card and payments systems, social programs in Pakistan should be able to rapidly target, verify, and distribute financial benefits under a variety of disaster relief and social protection programs.

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