NEC Begins De-Duplication Process

-As Political Parties Demand NEC To Turnover Voter Roll

By R. Joyclyn Wea:j.wea@newrepublicliberia.com

The National Elections Commission (NEC) has begun the de-duplication process of the 2017 voter roll in keeping with the joint resolution of the National Legislature.

As a means of ensuring accountability and transparency, the exercise is being carried out by NEC along with technicians of all political parties legally operating in Liberia so as to path the way for free and fair conduct of the December 8, 2020 Senatorial Midterm elections across the country.

The term deduplication refers generally to eliminating duplicate or redundant information. Data deduplication, in computer storage, refers to the elimination of redundant data. Record linkage, in databases, refers to the task of finding entries that refer to the same entity in two or more files.

The voter roll was used during previous elections that brought Senator Dillon and Representative Abu Kamara to power and other by-elections across the fifteen political subdivisions of Liberia.

The start of the exercise on Tuesday, September 1, 2020, witnessed a heated debate between Political Party Representatives and the head of the Data Center at the National Elections Commission to turn over the voter roll to individual members for index revision or analysis.

The Data head said the purpose is not to distribute the voter roll to Political Party Technicians, but rather for them to come jointly and collectively carryout as authorized by the election law of Liberia.

According to him, the voter-roll was distributed to individual party during the 2017 presidential and legislative elections and that the NEC has not made any amendment to that.

He further said the document cannot be released for public consumption until the cleaning process is completed and posted for consideration by the public.

Subsequently; one of the participating party technicians in person of Acarous Aaron Temo, Assistant Secretary General for Planning and Policy at the All Liberian People Party contested that the voter-roll must be distributed to participants as well as time accorded them to review and be able to make informed input.

Temo was one of those who testified to the alleged electoral fraud particularly on the VVR during the land mark case between the late political leader of liberty party and the national elections commission in 2017.

According to him, in order to prevent controversies and distrust in the process, it is important for the NEC to surrender said document to them, this was agreed upon by all of the participants, but the NEC objected to that.