Credence Facilitates Biometric Voter Registration in Papua New Guinea

Credence ID is using biometric technology to facilitate voter registration in Papua New Guinea. The company’s tech has now been used in two successful field trials, the second of which was completed on October 7.

During the trial, voter enrollment was conducted with the CredenceTAB. The mobile device is able to capture faces, signatures, and all 10 fingerprints, and election officials also used it to record the registration location of each voter. The biometric data was matched with existing voter information that was loaded onto the device, while new voters were verified and added to the registry in the field. Those new records were then transferred to a central database and compared to old records to make sure there were no duplicates.

“The biometric voting registration system will eradicate fraud like inflated common rolls, ghost names and underage voters,” said acting Electoral Commissioner Simon Sinai. “This technology is easy to use for both the operators and voters. We are now improving on the first trial and will do more trials to get prepared.”

Voters were being registered for the Kupiano elections in Papua New Guinea’s Abau district ahead of the country’s upcoming national election. The project leveraged CredenceCONNECT in addition to the CredenceTAB to help election officials track the information gathered in the field. CredenceCONNECT is a Software-as-a-Service device and data management platform that can be accessed through a web browser. Once they are logged in, officials can track the location of each registration device, and gauge information like battery life and the number of enrollments and card reads that have been conducted with that device.  

Credence released the original version of CredenceCONNECT in September of 2019, and followed that with an updated 2.0 version back in July. The company recently revealed that it will be placing NEXT fingerprint sensors in a new budget-friendly line of ECO devices.

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October 15, 2020 – by Eric Weiss