GOVERNMENT'S PHOTO VOTER LIST PILOT PROJECT A

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 DHAKA 001095 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/03/2017 TAGS: PHUM PGOV KGOV KDEM BG SUBJECT: GOVERNMENT'S PHOTO VOTER LIST PILOT PROJECT A SUCCESS Classified By: Charge d'Affaires, a.i. Geeta Pasi for reasons 1.4(d) ¶1. (SBU) SUMMARY. The Bangladesh Election Commission's three-week pilot project to test new methodologies for compiling the voter list officially ended on June 28. The pilot, which took place in Sreepur north of Bangladesh, registered approximately 46,000 voters and tested different data collection methods to create a voter list with photographs. END SUMMARY. THREE-WEEK PILOT ENDED JUNE 28 ============================== ¶2. (SBU) On June 10, the Bangladesh Election Commission began a three-week project to test different methodologies and technologies for preparing a voter list with photographs (photo voter list, or PVL). Election Commission workers, with significant assistance from the Army, set up 30 registration centers in Sreepur, a town of approximately 44,000 voters located in Gazipur municipality about 20 miles north of Dhaka. The pilot project officially ended on June ¶28. Consultants from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) also worked closely with the Election Commission to develop the pilot. ¶3. (SBU) The process of registering people for the PVL varies considerably from previous practice in Bangladesh. Earlier, enumerators would go door-to-door, preparing fresh lists every five years for parliamentary elections. The ability to update the list was limited because the data was not computerized or even alphabetically or geographically organized. People were sometimes given a receipt with their voter number on it, without which it would be difficult to find their names on the voter list. This meant that on election day, voters without that receipt were dependent on political party camps located outside of voting centers to give them their registration numbers. According to some election observation missions, this was an invitation to electoral fraud. PROVISIONAL VOTER ID A MAJOR INCENTIVE ====================================== ¶4. (SBU) The pilot in Sreepur tested two methods for registering people, both of which required voters to visit registration centers. All people over 16 years of age could be registered; though the voting age is 18, election officials wanted to make sure the list created included all those who would be eligible to vote in December 2008, when �A;parliamentary elections are anticipated. As an incentive to go to the centers, prospective voters were offered a laminated provisional voter identity card when they registered. According to diplomats who visited the Sreepur pilot, people indicated to them the ID card was a major reason they went to register. ¶5. (SBU) The overall voter registration plan includes provisions to use the initial voter list data collection process as a jumping-off point for the collection of data for a national identity card. According to the Election Commission, the voter registry will not be dependent on completion of the national ID card program, which according to the Bangladesh government could take up to five years. ¶6. (SBU) During the pilot, the Election Commission tested two types of software, both of which had been procured by the Army shortly after the declaration of the state of emergency on January 11 (Reftel). Different types of digital cameras and computer equipment were also used to see which systems worked best and minimized the time required to register each voter. At the initiative of the Army, they also tried out different types of portable fingerprint scanners for eventual use in the national ID card project. According to UNDP, tenders for the procurement of some equipment have already been released. Companies will have 40 days to submit bids for review. The Election Commission has stressed to us they plan to follow Bangladesh procurement law to the letter to ensure the bidding is free of corruption. ARMY PLAYING MAJOR ROLE ======================= ¶7. (SBU) According to diplomats from donor countries who visited the pilot, the Army was "very present" at DHAKA 00001095 002 OF 002 registration centers. Although the Election Commission has tried to downplay the Army's role, Army officers in Sreepur characterized the situation as "the Election Commission is supporting us," rather than the other way around. One diplomat described the role of the civilians as "auxiliary" to the Army, taking the form of enumerators and data entry operators. POSITIVE -- BUT QUALIFIED -- REVIEWS ==================================== ¶8. (SBU) Election Commission officials are heralding the pilot as a success, claiming that even more than the expected 44,000 voters had been registered during the process. (NOTE: Accurate population statistics are difficult to get, and the initial 44,000 figure was only an estimate based on census and previous voter list data.) The Commission has said it will announce an elections "roadmap" by July 15. One expected element of this roadmap will be the announcement of voter registration in Rajshahi, Bangladesh's fifth largest city, by mid-August, with Khulna and Dhaka to follow soon after. Because of resource and budget constraints, the Commission cannot conduct registration throughout the entire country simultaneously, but has opted instead for a "rolling" registration focusing on the most difficult and fraud-prone areas first. According to one donor's estimate, this means running about 170 Sreepur-like operations at any one time over the next twelve months. ¶9. (C) Several diplomats who visited the pilot said the Bangladeshis were much further along in the development of the process than they had expected. While praising the efficiency of the process, several donors are asking the Commission and UNDP for an outside organization to check the accuracy of the pilot list. Two of the biggest potential donors to the PVL project, the European Commission and the United Kingdom's Department for International Development, have also asked how the Election Commission and UNDP plan to incorporate "lessons learned" from the Sreepur exercise into the overall PVL strategy. COMMENT: A SUCCESSFUL STEP, BUT SERIOUS QUESTIONS REMAIN ============================================= =========== ¶10. (C) The new voter registration process has enormous potential to improve the way elections in Bangladesh operate. While the pilot appears to have gone better than expected, there remain several unresolved issues like the role of the Army in the overall registration process, and how a country lacking data protection legislation will guarantee registration information is properly controlled and not misused. Most challenging, however, is the scale of the task ahead: expanding a successful but limited pilot to reach the estimated 70 to 80 million potential voters within the one-year timeframe the Election Commission has set for itself, especially given the lack of basic infrastructure and skilled information technology workers outside major urban areas. PASI