On election day in 2021, at a polling station in Wakiso, a biometric voter verification kit refused to recognise a woman’s fingerprints.
She wiped her hands on her dress, then tried again. Nothing. The presiding officer restarted the machine twice. The woman asked the presiding officer nervously, “If it cannot see me, will you remove my vote?”
Eventually, the officials shifted to manual verification. But the doubt lingered. That lingering doubt is now threatening to cast a shadow over the 2026 general election, because four years later, the people expected to safeguard the process still do not fully understand the machines designed to secure it.
Last week in parliament, the unease burst into full public view. Leader of the Opposition Joel Ssenyonyi stood and asked the question that has stalked Uganda’s election season: how can a nation place so much faith in a machine it barely understands? “We need to know how these machines work. We are stakeholders, not observers.”
His statement was not simply about unfamiliar technology. It was about a deeper issue: trust.
A TECHNOLOGY PRESENTED AS A CURE— BUT WRAPPED IN MYSTERY
For years, biometric voter verification kits, or BVVKs, have been presented as the antidote to Uganda’s most persistent electoral illnesses: multiple voting, impersonation, and ghost names on the roll.
By scanning fingerprints or facial data linked to the national register, the machines are supposed to guarantee that each vote belongs only to the person who casts it. But the promise of certainty has met the reality of confusion.
“In the past, they have been used, and they never functioned,” Ssenyonyi reminded the House. “Network issues, usability problems, and so on. One and a half months to the election, and all of that is a green area.”
He was not exaggerating. Across the country, trainers are unable to explain error codes, members of parliament do not know the system’s backup procedures, agents have no guidance on how to verify failures, and Electoral Commission officials continue to speak more about procurement than actual machine performance.
Last November, the Electoral Commission issued a hurried advert, asking for biometric voter verification kit trainers ahead of the 2026 general election. It was an unusual scramble.
The commission needs roughly 1,050 trainers, about three for every county in the country, yet the timing and urgency suggested something deeper: a system racing against its own clock. In parliament, even the minister of Finance, Henry Musasizi, who presented the supplementary budget request for financing the machines, had no clear answers on how they would work.
“We were shocked,” MP Ssemujju Nganda said. The result is a technology that was meant to reassure voters now threatening to unsettle them.
PLANNING GAPS, MISSING MONEY
The immediate spark was an astonishing announcement: the Electoral Commission needs Shs 469 billion to create 15,256 new polling stations, just weeks before the election.
“How can this be okay?” Ssenyonyi asked. “We have had five years to plan for an election.” Speaker Anita Among, usually more tempered on election matters, showed rare impatience.
“Do they just need to create, or have they created?” It was a polite way of asking: has the Commission been asleep? These late-stage requests point to deeper problems. Training has not taken place, demonstrations have not been conducted, legal guidance on what to do when a machine fails has not been issued, public education materials are nowhere to be found, and the contingency plans, if they exist, remain unclear.
If lawmakers, who are expected to guide millions of Ugandans, still do not know how a BVVK works, what hope is there for the rural presiding officer under a mango tree when the screen freezes?
THE CHAIN OF TRUST MIGHT BREAK
Election technology does not operate in a vacuum; it operates in emotion. When a machine fails at a polling station, people react not to the error code but to what it represents: uncertainty. Uganda’s political history is sensitive enough without adding unpredictable technology.
“If the kits are used mandatorily,” Ssenyonyi pressed, “what happens when the network fails? What happens when officials do not know how to use them?” Even ruling-party MPs, he said, complained that BVVK failures distorted their primaries.
This is not an opposition talking point; it is a national alarm. Across Africa, countries with similar systems; Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, have witnessed chaos when biometric devices malfunctioned. In several cases, voting was suspended, delayed, or duplicated, fuelling disputes that lasted months. Uganda enters that same terrain, except with fewer answers and less public trust.
WHO HAS ACCESS TO UGANDANS’ BIOMETRICS?
Kampala Central MP Muhammad Nsereko raised an anxiety that almost everyone else had sidestepped: data security.
“Our data from NIRA will interface with the machine supplier,” he said. “And I hear, allegedly, the supplier is from China. This company will now have my biometrics. How secure is it?”
In a country where phones, bank apps, land records, and even SIM cards hinge on biometric authentication, the risk is not theoretical. A breach would not just compromise an election; it could compromise entire identities.
Nsereko asked whether the machines would be labelled for specific polling stations, a key safeguard. No answer came.
A PARLIAMENT IN THE DARK
The most striking moment came from Speaker Among herself. “We need training for members of parliament,” she said.
“We are representatives of the people. We should be able to tell them what to expect at the end of the day.”
If parliament, the country’s highest deliberative body, admits confusion, the problem is not minor. It is foundational. Attorney General Kiryowa Kiwanuka tried to reassure the House: he would summon the Electoral Commission to demonstrate how the system works before the next day’s close of business.
But many MPs privately wonder whether the Commission itself understands its own gadgetry as well as it claims.
THE WIDER PRESSURE: IDS, REGISTRATION AND THE MISSING VOTER
The biometric system relies entirely on the National ID database. If your ID is missing, damaged, or uncollected, the machine cannot verify you.
“Has everybody gotten the IDs?” Among asked quietly. It was a rhetorical question. Millions have not. Jackson Obua said NIRA has a “robust plan” to distribute IDs, but plans have rarely matched performance.
In past elections, thousands of voters were turned away because their fingerprints were unreadable or their details mismatched. BVVKs could magnify these failures.
THE REAL RISK
Uganda’s political climate is combustible. Every election cycles through the same accusations: ballot stuffing, pre-ticked ballots, ghost voters. The BVVKs were supposed to end this.
Instead, they risk fueling fresh suspicion: why did the machine reject this voter? Why did it work in one station but fail in another? Who controls the data? What is the backup method? And why was none of this explained earlier?
Each unanswered question on polling day becomes an allegation. Each allegation becomes a confrontation. And confrontation, in Uganda’s elections, can quickly become violence.
EC SPEAKS OUT ON 2026 READINESS
As pressure mounts over Uganda’s preparedness for the 2026 general election, the Electoral Commission has moved to reassure the public that critical systems, including the much-debated biometric voter verification kits, are being readied for deployment.
In an interview this week, Electoral Commission spokesperson Julius Mucunguzi confirmed that the Commission has recruited more than 51,000 machine operators who will undergo intensive training throughout the week.
Their task is straightforward but essential: learn how the biometric machines work and understand the technical procedures that will guide voter verification on election day.
“We have secured more than 109,000 machines,” Mucunguzi said. “With 50,739 polling stations, each will have two machines. This is to address the possibility of one machine failing and to provide a backup power bank in case batteries run low.”
Although each device is built with long- life batteries designed to operate for more than twelve hours, the decision to deploy two machines per station is meant to minimise the risk of disruption. Mucunguzi said the training is being rolled out in phases.
The first phase focuses on the operators themselves; the second will involve public demonstrations for political parties, candidates, civil society, and other stakeholders.
“Operators must know how the machine functions, what to do, and what not to do, to ensure the success of the one-man, one-woman vote,” he said.
VOTER IDENTIFICATION AMID NATIONAL ID CHALLENGES
Questions have swirled about how voters without National IDs will be verified. Mucunguzi clarified that voters may present either a National ID or a voter location slip. The slip contains a barcode that can be scanned for immediate verification.
This week, the commission is distributing verification slips to registered voters through parish-level staff. Voters may also check their details online. By January 13, 2026, Mucunguzi said, all registered voters are expected to have collected their slips.
WHY NEW POLLING STATIONS WERE CREATED
Another major change for 2026 is the sharp increase in polling stations. The commission has capped each station at a maximum of six hundred voters to ensure verification and voting can be completed within the allotted time. Stations that exceeded that threshold were split, creating thousands of new polling points.
“There have been new polling stations formed due to splitting. These stations are in close proximity to the original locations, and voters will be guided by their names to identify where they vote,” Mucunguzi explained.
Uganda now has 50,739 polling stations, up from 38,000 in 2021 and more than the 42,000 originally projected for 2026. The expansion means more staff, more materials, and more logistical demands for the Commission.
Mucunguzi defended the biometric voter verification kits (BVVKs), describing them as a major improvement over manual registers. He emphasized that the kits enhance accuracy, reduce human error, prevent duplicate voting, and strengthen electoral credibility.
The system relies on fingerprint or facial verification. Each successful scan confirms that a verified voter corresponds to the name on the register. A single BVVK can verify and clear a voter in roughly twenty-five to thirty seconds, allowing it to process about seven hundred people during the usual ten-hour voting window.
All voter data is preloaded on district- specific devices. Each kit is tracked through a Mobile Device Management system that can locate, lock or wipe a device if it goes missing. The data stored on the machines is encrypted and cannot be accessed without authorisation.
Crucially, the BVVK operates offline during voting and does not record, nor can it infer, how a person voted. It only confirms that the voter was verified.
WHAT MUST HAPPEN NOW
Experts say Uganda still has a narrow chance to steady the process:
• Public demonstrations of the machines for MPs, journalists, agents, and civil society
• Clear backup protocols if the machine fails
• Training for all polling officials within weeks, not months
• Stress tests in remote areas with poor network coverage
• Publishing simple guides in major languages
• Clarifying data security and vendor details
• Labelling machines per polling station to prevent misuse
Above all, the Electoral Commission must communicate openly, and honestly.