ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - Iraq is set to use facial recognition technology for the upcoming November parliamentary elections to address the fingerprint registering issues seen in previous polls, an official from the Iraqi electoral body told The New Region on Sunday.

Iraq is set to hold parliamentary elections on November 11, with 118 parties and 25 alliances having “expressed their desire to participate,” according to an official tally by the Iraqi High Electoral Commission (IHEC).

Iraq has previously made use of fingerprint scans to ensure the security and validity of the process, the electoral body however, this time around “has added a device, making it possible for people to vote using their faces,” according to Nabard Omar, head of Kurdistan Regions’ elections board at the IHEC.

“If their fingerprints do not register, they can vote using their faces,” said Omar, adding that the decision was taken in light of the fact that “in the previous elections, a lot of people have had issues with their fingerprints.”

Issues with digital fingerprint registration were a common theme in previous elections, especially among older voters and those with corroded fingertips as a result of cleaning who had lost the grooves in their fingertips, requiring multiple attempts to get a reading or completely failing to get one in certain cases.

People who have had issues with fingerprints in the past can now visit the commission’s offices to resolve their issues and get their facial data registered to be able to vote without hassle in the November elections, said Omar.

The November 11 parliamentary elections will establish the sixth term of the Iraqi legislature, with over 29 million people eligible to cast a ballot, of which eight million have yet to complete their biometric registration requirements.