In preparation for the spring 2011 general elections, Uganda adopted an innovative method to improve its voter register. As increasing numbers of Ugandans become computer literate, the National Voter Register (NVR) included a feature that allows individual voters to verify their registration status and polling stations via the internet. By allowing individual voters to verify their registration status and polling stations online, Uganda’s citizens play an active role in updating the register. This also allows civil society and political parties to monitor the accuracy and legitimacy of the voter register.
Empowering citizens to make the voter rolls more accurate will hopefully boost Uganda’s efforts to conduct free and fair elections. Uganda has achieved mixed progress along its path to democracy. On the one hand, the presidential election of 2006 was relatively free and fair. That election was the first administered by Uganda’s Electoral Commission (EC) and represented the first multiparty elections since political parties were outlawed in 1986. On the other hand, the 2006 election also gave President Yoweri Museveni a third term in power, due to a 2005 constitutional amendment ending presidential term limits, while opposition parties remain too weak to threaten the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM).
Voter distrust is widespread and is due in part to the perceived lack of independence of Uganda’s Electoral Commission, whose commissioners are appointed by President Museveni. This skepticism extends in particular to the voter registration process. Introducing a system where voters themselves can contribute to the accuracy of the voter register might help improve the perception of transparency of the electoral commission and the electoral process as a whole.
By visiting this website, Ugandan voters can conduct an online search of their registration status by using their name or voter-ID number. Polling station lists are also available online and may be viewed or downloaded by anyone accessing the website.
A report containing the number of individual searches and polling station lists viewed or downloaded shows a steady stream of visitors to the site. In August, approximately 98,000 polling station lists were viewed and/or downloaded followed by over 51,000 polling lists in September. Given there are 23, 915 polling stations (up from 19,000 in the 2006 general elections), the number of downloads vastly exceed the total number of polling stations. This suggests that civil society and political parties are using this new tool to gain access to critical electoral data. Individual voter searches registered about 2,000 hits in August but the number of searches went down to about 700 in September following the end of the display period.
The official launch of the online NVR took place on August 26, 2010 at the Hotel Africana. The event was presided over by Deputy Attorney General Fred Ruhindi, and attended by EC Chairman Dr. Badru Kiggundu, other EC representatives, a delegation from USAID and the US Embassy, political party members and civil society representatives, amongst others. US Ambassador Jerry Lanier, also in attendance, discussed the importance of the online register as a step towards peaceful and fair elections in Uganda. An SMS campaign to one million individual mobile phone users followed the official launch to further introduce and promote the usage of the web-based voter registration verification system.
The EC and IFES are also working to develop an SMS polling station verification service that will allow voters who do not have access to the internet to send an SMS using their personal identification number to verify their polling station location. The adoption of this new technology will hopefully improve the capacity of the EC in managing the voter registration process; resulting in an increase of voter confidence in the electoral process for the 2011 elections.