The state election watchdog announced on Tuesday that improvements to voting and counting procedures are being considered ahead of next year’s general elections in April.

In a press release, the National Election Commission(NEC) said that the addition of a manual counting procedure is under review in order to strengthen the reliability of the vote-counting process.

Ballots are currently sorted by a machine and checked by a person at a screening counter. The change would add manual counting before sorting with a voting machine. 

The election watchdog denied media reports that the machine mistakenly processed invalid votes as valid during the previous general election.

While stressing that the accuracy of the machine has been proven on numerous occasions, the commission said manual counting is being weighed for the 22nd general elections in April in light of controversy over the accuracy of the system.