Case Study

1. Voter pre-registration

As the initial step of the registration process, Liberian citizens could utilize a dedicated online platform to pre-register and provide their personal information. Upon completing the pre-registration form, individuals received an encrypted QR code enabling online or offline usage, making it a versatile option even in the most remote areas. Applicants later presented their QR codes at designated registration stations and their information prefilled into the system, significantly streamlining the registration process. More than 20% of registered individuals used the online platform and reduced their registration time from six to two minutes per person.

2. Voter registration

Once at the registration station, applicants were able to either provide their pre-registration QR code or fill in biographic data. Afterward, the biometric data was enrolled using voter registration kits to capture face and two-finger biometrics. Portrait photos were captured following ICAO recommendations, and face image quality was checked in real-time. Additionally, the system performed face liveness checks on every registration to detect impersonation attempts.

Throughout the entire country, there were 1150 biometric kits used, each performing voter identity deduplication locally in the device. In the case of multiple registration attempts, only the initial record was considered valid, while the following attempts were treated as duplicates and prevented from further processing. Operators' biometric data was pre-enrolled before the registration process to prevent interference.

After the successful completion of the registration process, voters were issued identity cards which were printed on-site and used during the Election Day. The entire registration process spanned six weeks in total.

3. Registry consolidation

Consolidating voter identity records from all registration stations into a single, secure registry was a critical step toward centralized data management. Voter registration records were securely encrypted and transferred to a central system for further collective processing. Upon arrival at the central site, voter records were decrypted, and data integrity checks were conducted to verify that the received data was not compromised.

4. Registry cleanup

Swift and accurate registry cleanup helped to ensure the trustworthiness of the voter registry. Data validation was conducted to verify that each record had passed a liveness check and was not suspected of being underage. As a result, 529 applicants were identified as potential underage registrations. The subsequent stage of deduplication involved comparing all records against each other (N:N) to identify potential duplicates. 27,192 registration cases across the country were identified as ineligible attempts of individuals to register under different identities. Trained operators then conducted the adjudication phase, manually reviewing suspected and anomalous cases. The entire meticulous cleanup process resulted in the establishment of a unique voter registry.

5. Exhibition phase

Upon establishing the unique voter registry, the exhibition phase commenced, allowing Liberian citizens to verify the voter list at registration stations and provide feedback. 2,080 registration centers received voter lists categorized into three groups: eligible voters, suspected duplicates and suspected underage registrants. Citizens were able to provide feedback and request further changes in the final voter list. The final voter registration lists were then updated following the exhibition stage findings.

6. Voter roll generation

After the voter registry cleanup phase was completed, the preliminary list was generated for public review, and any necessary changes were applied before the final list was prepared for the elections. The final voter roll was generated and distributed across polling stations according to the regulations established by The National Elections Commission of the Republic of Liberia.