IEBC insists it will only use electronic voter register during August polls
The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission
(IEBC) has maintained its decision to disallow use of the manual voter registers across the over 46,000 polling stations as a complementary mechanism
to the electronic identification of voters in the August polls.
The electoral agency says it arrived at the
decision basing on the Court of Appeal judgment of 2017 when the defunct
National Super Alliance (NASA) had gone to court seeking orders to
overturn a High Court ruling that found that the commission had provided complimentary
voter identification mechanism.
Azimio la Umoja One Kenya coalition party
presidential candidate Raila Odinga and several civil society organisations
have questioned IEBC’s rationale in its directive.
While meeting the Kenya Editors Guild (KEG)
in Kwale County on Friday, the commission responded to concerns raised by Odinga
and the civil society groups.
IEBC Chairman
Wafula Chebukati said: “Biometric verification is the primary mode of identifying
voters. Where a voter cannot be identified using biometrics, then the presiding
officers shall use a complementary mechanism of alpha numeric search in the
presence of agents.”
Commissioner Abdi Guliye
added: “The failure rate is supposed to be very low because we have 10
fingerprints and we only need one…so if one fails, you go to the next one until
all the 10 are exhausted.”
The commission termed the administrative
directive the ultimate solution to electoral malpractices.
“We recruit poll
officials from Kenyans, we know who they are. If they are all belonging to one
community and they have a preferred candidate, they can decide to collude and
say hii register iko na watu wetu, wacha tucross alafu tuwavotie. We’re trying
to avoid something like that,” added Guliye.
Among the concerns raised by Odinga include
the collapse of the electronic voter identification system by default or
design, thereby denying the electorate an opportunity to exercise their
democratic right at the ballot.
But the commission says the backup complimentary
kits through the Kenya Integrated Elections Management System (KIEMS) will be
good enough and no voter will be turned away.
“If there is a
total failure of the primary kit and backup kits, then the presiding officer
will report the same to the returning officer and there is a protocol for that.
Now is when the complimentary mechanism will kick in, that means you will resort
to the register,” said Guliye.
Odinga, through his chief legal advisor Paul
Mwangi, questions Chebukati’s change of heart, after rooting for manual
identification of voters and results transmission as a complementary measure in
the 2017 general election.
According to Odinga, who was in the 2013 and
2017 presidential races, technology failure on election day is likely.
He termed Chebukati’s directive risky, since
it is based on an assumption that the KIEMS kits will work seamlessly.
In court, are seven civil society
organisations challenging IEBC’s decision. The groups have asked the High Court
to compel IEBC to restore the use of the manual register.
These concerns are shared by ODM party national
chairman John Mbadi, who wants the commission to use both the manual and
electronic registers in the August 9th polls.
“We would want electronic voter identification
because it minimises theft of votes, but previously we have seen cases where the
system has failed and it has been consistent, and we have a concern that it may
not be different,” said Mbadi.
The electoral body has scheduled a meeting
with the four presidential candidates on Wednesday to reach a consensus over
the matter.
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