INEC: Anambra governorship election results will be uploaded electronically

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has stated that electronic transmission of results will be adopted for the forthcoming Anambra governorship election.

This was disclosed on Thursday by INEC’s commissioner for information and voter education, Festus Okoye during an interview with Channels Television.

Okoye said the commission will make use of the bimodal voter accreditation system (BVAS) technology, instead of the usual smart card readers for the November 6 Anambra governorship election.

According to the INEC spokesman, the BVAS technology will enable the electoral body to conduct voter accreditation and upload results to its viewing portal.

“As you pointed out, we are more or less retiring the smart card reader. The smart card reader has performed well. It has served this country well. It served for two electoral cycles with the bye-elections and all off-season elections that we have had,” he said.

“The issue now is that there are more modern technologies in the market; that is exactly what we are doing. So, we are deploying the bimodal voter accreditation system for the purpose of the Anambra governorship election.

“The implication is that what we are now doing is what we called technological convergence. This BVAS is what we are also using for voter enrollment — the continuous voter registration exercise.

“When we engage in voter enrollment, we call it the INEC voter enrollment device. After enrollment, when we engage in elections; we call it the BVAS because it is going to be used for accreditation of voters.

“After the election, the same technology, the same device will be used for uploading polling unit results into our INEC result viewing portal. So, it is a multi-functional device. That is exactly what we are going to use.”

Asked to state in clear terms if INEC is going to transmit the Anambra governorship results electronically, he said: “We are going to upload polling unit results into our INEC result viewing portal.”

When asked again if that means results will be uploaded electronically, he said: “Yes, exactly.”