The Director of Elections, Danville Walker (left), chats with Lloyd Barnett (right), president of the Kiwanis Club of Kingston and past director Al Herron-Muir, just before the start of a luncheon at the Hilton New Kingston Hotel, yesterday.
AN AMERICAN company has been contracted to correct major glitches in the fingerprint cross-matching of electors, Director of Elections, Danville Walker, said yesterday.
With the use of the Cogent technology, the Electoral Office will not need to go back into the field to redo the 200,000 plus fingerprints thought to be 'spoiled' in 1997, Mr. Walker said. This would also help the Electoral Office to have a voters list ready by the end of year ahead of local government elections which are due to be held between March and June 2001.
Mr. Walker told yesterday's regular meeting of the Kiwanis Club of Kingston at the Hilton Kingston Hotel, that with the recent advancements in fingerprint technology since 1997, many of the 208,346 sets of fingerprints that were rejected could now be re-scanned, re-processed and re-entered.
"We have signed a contract with an American company which will be coming to Jamaica soon to set up the processing of fingerprints," he said.
According to Mr. Walker, if this is successful, at the end of the year, there should be a fully-matched voters list.
"This is significant because this was one of the main flashpoints of the previous election," he said.
The use of this new technology by the company, Cogent, will cost US$450,000.
Mr. Walker also outlined plans for phase two, which would see the application of an Electoral Registration System (ERS) (developed in phase one of electoral reform as initiated by the EAC) to an Election Day scenario.
He also reported three companies are due in Jamaica by September 7 to display technological solutions aimed at eliminating the possibility of electoral fraud, voter impersonation and ballot stuffing.
The companies who will be displaying the technology are the French-based Sagem, and the US-based firms, Cogent and TRW.
"We made it clear to them we're very serious about getting this technology. I don't know of anywhere in the world that has used the system to generate a ballot, but using it should not be difficult," he said.
"It can be developed in such a manner to be implemented in an election scenario."
Mr. Walker also praised the Citizens Action for Free & Fair Elections (CAFFE) who were able to organise about 1,000 volunteers/observers who served in the polling stations for the 1997 General Election, the majority having no prior electoral experience.
He lauded the relationship at the constituency level between the parties and the Electoral Office of Jamaica, but urged the population to get enumerated, and to serve in the electoral process.
"Unless we are able to raise the standard of people who present themselves to serve, we'll not be able to achieve what we want in the management of the electoral process. People must come forward to serve as presiding officers ... unless we have good people running the system, we will never have a good result," he said.
The present voters list stands at more than 1.2 million, and a new voters' list will be issued on October 30.
All the voter cards for the about 1.2 million voters have been prepared and are being distributed through the fixed centres. However, about 300,000 cards remain to be distributed and the EOJ is appealing to the public to collect their individual voter cards.
