Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission (IEC) said on Monday that all ten fingers of the voters will be scanned in the biometric devices for recognizing the voter’s identity in the upcoming presidential election.

Rahima Zafari, a member of the IEC told Ariana News that all ten fingers of the voters will be scanned in the biometric devices and our partners have promised to solve the technical challenges.

However, some politicians warn that using the biometric devices that were used in the 2018 parliamentary election will not prevent electoral fraud.

“We don’t want to a fraudulent election. If we want to have a fair election, biometric devices must be perfect,” said Hamayoun Jareer, a member of the Hizb-e-Islami political party led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Based on findings, the biometric devices which were used in 2018 parliamentary elections have not the ability to differentiate two people’s fingerprints at the same time.

Meanwhile, electoral experts believe that scanning ten fingers in the existing biometric devices is time-consuming on the polling day.

“If we go for the presidential election using the existing offline biometric devices and do not use an online biometric system, we will create a crisis which will not be manageable neither by the IEC nor by the government,” said Dawood Ali Najafi, former chief of IEC Secretariat.

The Afghan presidential election is scheduled to be held on 28 September 2019. Originally it was scheduled to be held on 20 April, but later it was delayed to July 20 after problems raised in using a biometric system and finalizing results of Afghan parliamentary elections.