Ahead of today’s elections for district chairpersons, city mayors, and councilors, hundreds of Biometric Voter Verification Kit (BVVK) operators in Wakiso District underwent intensive retraining on Wednesday evening.Our reporter found a section of them at the Nansana Division headquarters. The session focused on proper machine handling and other election basics, following widespread technical glitches that plagued the January 15 nationwide presidential and parliamentary polls.
The BVVK machines, introduced by the Electoral Commission to verify voter identities through fingerprints and facial recognition, aim to prevent impersonation and multiple voting. However, during the January 15 general elections, many BVVK devices failed to function across the country, including in several Wakiso polling stations. This forced officials to revert to manual verification, causing significant delays and frustration among voters. In some areas of Wakiso, machines were not even distributed due to late arrivals at the district level, as confirmed by Returning Officer Tolbert Musinguzi in an earlier interview.
One operator, speaking anonymously as they had not been authorized to address the media, described the purpose of the gathering. “We came here today to have a final briefing ahead of the election, but also got retained on the operation of the BVVK machines,” the operator said, adding that their supervisor hinted the machines would be deployed in today’s election.
The retraining comes as part of efforts to restore confidence in the technology after its rocky debut. The Electoral Commission had procured over 100,000 upgraded BVVK units for the 2025/2026 electoral cycle to enhance credibility, but the January 15 failures highlighted ongoing challenges with reliability and distribution. Beyond the operators, polling officials, including presiding officers and their assistants, have been reshuffled. Personnel previously assigned to specific polling stations have been redeployed to different ones.
One of the officials involved in the process explained the rationale. “They have changed us, and they are saying that this is to uphold the interests of the election and reducing on risks of bribery. Since the presiding officers of given pooling stations had been notified,d they said some candidate would know where to find them and may be bribe them or something like that,” the officer told our reporter.By the time our reporter left the division headquarters at 11;00 pm, the electoral officials were still at the place receiving some other instructions on how the day would run.
Today’s elections follow closely on the heels of the January 15 general polls, which saw low voter turnout and biometric issues nationwide. In Wakiso, a key district with a large voter base and strong opposition presence, the district chairperson race carry high stakes.
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