Voter ID? National ID? or no ID? A BIG Question

During an interview with the BBC [Daily Prothom Alo, March 06, 2007], Prof. Jamilur Reza Choudhury, head of an expert committee formed by the Caretaker Government (CG) to study the voter ID issue, was asked how he would ensure that the data collected at the field level would be free of error. Dr. Choudhury rightly answered that it was a matter for the Election Commission (EC) to keep the data error free and outside his purview. With all respect to Dr. Choudhury, we believe that what he really meant was that the solution proposed by the expert committee was not designed to ensure error free data collection. It is a well known fact in any data collection or processing project that if the data collection is not designed to prevent erroneous data, then error is inevitable.

According to the expert committee, the Voter ID project will take one year to complete and will cost around Taka 430 Crore, or Tk 47 per ID for the approximately 9 crore voters. The previous Election Commission had already wasted over Tk. 200 crore on a voter list that was just voided by the High Court. The Election Commission looks for expertise from the Expert committee; if the experts can not ensure accuracy, what hope does the EC have? While the CG is recovering crores of taka lost to corruption, can Bangladesh afford to create another voter list that is guaranteed to be inaccurate and waste this significant amount of public money?

This question will become stronger if the CG approves such a project without a thorough research on what exactly needs to be done and how much to spend and what benefit it will bring to the country, etc. especially when they have already ordered investigation against the previous unsuccessful effort of issuing error free voter ID costing over Taka 200 crore. Further, Prof. Jamilur Reza Choudhury did not give a direct answer to the question on whether it should be a voter ID or a national ID and said that national ID will take more time and would cost more without recommending which one is to be done for the benefit of the country. Again, we believe Dr. Choudhury was staying true to his brief: he was tasked with coming up a budget for a voter ID project, and he answered that question, but we expect more from a pre-eminent technologist like him, including voicing his own opinion.

In the interest of transparency, it is very important to understand how the committee arrived at that figure of Taka 430 crore and one year implementation timeframe. Surely this is no national secret, but only other fact that is public about the expert committee report is that a laminated paper based ID card has been planned. There are photocopy shops in every street corner with laminating machines. In a country that has expert forgers who can replace photos in passports, the concept of a laminated paper id is laughable.

Lets examine this from another angle. Instead of saying “how much will a cheap and possibly forgeable and erroneous voter ID cost and how long will it take (presumably this is the question answered by the expert committee)?”, lets examine why Bangladesh needs ID for its citizens, and problems the ID solve. Do we require an ID to prevent election rigging and false voting? A voter list containing photos would serve the purpose equally well, and not be subject to forgery, and cost a lot less. Mandating voter IDs also assume that the person verifying the ID (the polling officers) are free from political bias or influence and will not just let some people through without any ID at all—which we unfortunately know to be demonstrably false in Bangladesh.
But if the objective is to provide identification cards to all adults, why stay limited to just voting? There is rampant fraud everywhere because Bangladesh lacks a credible method to identify people. Wrong people are imprisoned, criminals go free, frauds act as witnesses in court, all because we do not have any trustworthy way of identifying people. All we need to do is extend the voter ID concept and we could have a national ID for some additional investment that will open up many prospects in Bangladesh and greatly assist in good governance.

Considering the experience of even some developed countries such as UK, an ID, whether voter or national, to be error free, would require years of data collection and verification process and we can not expect it will be any different for Bangladesh, where no prior reliable data is available and everything needs to be developed from the scratch. Tiny Hong Kong took over three years to enroll its small population and still not sure if everyone has been enrolled, and the UK government has projected ten years for enrolling their entire population. Needless to say both these countries have got enough prior authentic documentation and records for immediate, efficient and accurate verification like birth certificate, driver’s license, etc. to verify someone enrolling in the program whereas Bangladesh with its huge population does not have any such resource to verify. So the one year implementation period looks highly impractical, if an error free system is to be developed, that would require months of preparation for tendering, importing necessary items, training thousands of staffs for the use of the necessary tools accurately and efficiently and printing cards and distribution of the same leaving only around six months or less for data collection and verification. Counterfeit currencies, forged passports and visas abound in Bangladesh--a paper laminated ID card can probably be forged in minutes. Digital passport in countries like UK, The Netherlands, etc. have been cracked in hours, both of which are much more sophisticated than a laminated paper ID and without proper verification process one can imagine what may happen to this ID initiative.

There is another proposal floating around: a voter list with photograph, but no voter ID. The rationale being given is: it will take too long to prepare the ID cards. We'd like to point out that the data collection for either the card or the voter list will take the longest—printing and distributing the cards would be quick. And a voter ID with photographs suffer from the same problem: a polling officer can let another person in, whether by choice or by mistake.

As for effectiveness, an ID card solution without automated verification facility does not guarantee error free election under the current circumstances, and as we mentioned before, no one can guarantee that the polling officers at all polling stations will work with 100% accuracy and will not certify anyone wrongly, whether intentionally or unintentionally, even with a proper ID card. As such it would require more reliance on technology than on human accuracy for the purpose of verification during polling to ensure error free election.

On the other hand through deployment of appropriate technology, it is possible to ensure that one person can vote only once no matter whether the election commission has the right or wrong information about that person in their voter list and whether or not there is any voter ID in place. So if the automation is done then each voter can be identified by putting their fingers on a scanner placed at each polling station that will be verified with a central server if this person has voted earlier or not and depending on the verification that person can be allowed to vote or otherwise be arrested for attempted vote rigging. In this process no prior collection of finger print is necessary as the central server will keep on storing finger prints right from the first person coming to vote anywhere in the country and to the last person to vote and start verifying new comers in real time with the fingerprints of people who have already voted. This way it will be fully ensured that no single person can vote more than once which should be the main objective of the EC under the current circumstances. In order to have multi-purpose benefit of this investment these verification equipment can be re-installed at various government facilities like police stations, ports, immigration, various license issuing agencies, large government buildings, etc. after the polls are over.

So if an ID is desired, let’s do it the right way. We all know that HASTE MAKES WASTE--it would be better to take the right span of time, which could be years or more, and spend the right amount of money and develop a national ID secure enough to discourage the people benefiting from forgery of such ID cards that would open up a new horizon to the country of delivering the rights of the people ensuring better public safety, better health care, better accountability, no public harassment resulting from false identification, etc. and conduct the vote through verification of each voter using appropriate technology ensuring one vote per voter at the time of voting for any election process. As this is going to be one time investment the same resource can be used for any election at any time for a long time to go.

It would be interesting to see the decision of the CG and EC in this respect and people of this country hopes that they will not become controversial through making any decision that would not solve the current problem.