The Vice President of Policy Think Tank, IMANI Africa has described the Electoral Commission (EC)'s April 18, scheduled date for a new voters' registration exercise infeasible.

According to Bright Simmons, it is "humanly impossible” to conduct the said exercise within a brief period.

He asserted that the assurances given by the election management body to put in place a credible set of new electronic logistics – both hardware and software - to execute the process is highly unlikely.

The EC has for the past few months come under criticism from Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and the public, for its move to replace the current electoral management system in its bid to improve the process.

To this regard, the EC listed a number of challenges facing the current system that have necessitated the move.

These include the obsolete nature and high rate of failure of the Biometric Verification Devices (BVDs), huge sums of money to be spent in refurbishing the existing technology, worn out sensors, the inability of BVDs to verify voters among others.

The CSOs unconvinced by the ECs reasons have embarked on several demonstrations across the country in their bid to stop the proposed move, which has been fruitless.

Speaking at the International Press Centre Tuesday, Bright Simons was confident that the commission may be forced to “take a shortcut” to help meet its deadline of 5 weeks as the said time allotted for the new system is not feasible.

“The EC cannot use a new system to conform to that timeline [April 18, 2020]. It is not possible…So if the EC goes ahead and does it then it will not be using the new system properly configured.

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"There must be some shortcuts that they might have discovered, which is going to enable them. But if they are going to do the proper thing, it is not possible,” the IMANI Vice President explained.

There are about 36,000 polling stations, 8,000 electoral registration centres across the country on which these new hardware and software systems are expected to be hosted among other configurations.

In reference to these metrics, the technologist further probed that: “If you want to build a software platform that can manage 25 million voters… can you use six weeks to build such a system?

"How much does it take to do an excel project for your finances? Think about it carefully. You need to do specifications, documentation issues, have people start to develop, start field tests, review where necessary… how possible is it to do that in six weeks?”

Bright Simons also expressed suspicion in the process and called on the Electoral Commissions to exhibit transparency in its dealings to avoid problems that may be encountered in the future.

“Because the EC has demonstrated a complete disinterest in doing things properly, we argue that they are likely to use a shortcut which could bring us problems. If not in this election, then subsequent ones.”