PNG ESP Governor Bird Wants Finger Voter ID for 2022 Elections

Papua New Guinea East Sepik Province Governor Allan Bird wants  finger ID for 2022 general elections. He released the following statement.

Statement

 News coming out of the MNW by elections is quite disturbing. Voters using other people's names to vote: children voting then posting their marked finger online. People from another electorate trooping in to vote and the list goes on. 

This is a scary indicator of what is likely to happen in 2022 if we do not quickly find a way to electronically identify voters so that there is only one vote per person.

The Electoral Commission simply could not guarantee a free and fair election in MNW yesterday. It's that simple.

While NID is making steady progress, it is not moving fast enough. In 2019, the Bank of PNG brought a European Company to Wewak and we discussed the possibility of unique identity for banking purposes. This company could produce a photo ID with a unique finger print in 5 minutes. Due to COVID19, ESPG and BoPNG could not progress this initiative.

I strongly urge the Electoral Commission to talk to Bank of Papua New Guinea and bring that company in to do voter registration and each voter be given a unique Voter ID Card.

Having said that NID is making great progress in ESP with one district already completing all NID registrations. We are about 50% of the way through our registrations. But there is no guarantee this will be ready for 2022.

If it is not possible to electronically register the voters then perhaps we should supplement the Common Roll with the Digicel telephone registry for instance. We can't allow what happened in the MNW by election yesterday to become the PNG yardstick for elections.

Free and fair elections are a critical component of the democratic process and is fundamental to ensuring good governance.

If we can't get it right at the polls, we will not get it right on the floor of Parliament. We will continue to erode all our institutions of government to a point where we simply cannot recover.

It all starts with leadership and our system of appointing leaders is deeply flawed and very easily abused.

The people must demand a change. I am happy to volunteer East Sepik Province to trial such a system and move to electronic IDs for voting purposes by 2022. Change has to start somewhere.

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