The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission of Kenya has today, the 23rd of June announced that they will no longer rely on the manual register of voters that has been in use in the past.
Sealing the final voters roll who stand at 22.12 Million eligible to vote during the August Polls , IEBC chairman Mr Wafula Chebukati explained that the reason for scrapping off the manual register is to avoid Election malpractices that were witnessed in the country in 2017.
,” As a result of the 2017 post election evaluation, most of the Mal practices were as a result of the physical voters registry. We believe that using a digital register will cut down these malpractices where a presiding officer will know who has not voted, their ID numbers, and is therefore, able to input their details in their KIEM kits allowing malpractices to happen.”
Explained Chebukati.
Azimio la Umoja Presidential Candidate’s agent ,Paul Mwangi had explained his fears over the system in place citing reasons like the lack of a backup system in place should it fail and the safe guards in place due to security issues.
The IEBC chief executive officer ,Hussein Marjin also assured Kenyans that the KIEM kits will have a back up In each of the 1450 wards. He also added that the use of the physical register has in the past allowed some IEBC officials to engage in election malpractices either by deleting or adding names of voters.
While this is a good move it has brought up mixed reactions with the civil society moving to court in a bid to challenge the matter. They have claimed that should there be a technological failure then the elections will have to be postponed. For the Kenya Integrated Management system(KIEMS) to function then there must be stable internet connection in all the stations.
The Kenya Human Rights Commission has also objected this decision claiming
,”The decision to strictly rely on Kiems as the only mode of voter identification is a violation of statutes and is susceptible to massive failure, which can lead to ultimate postponement of the elections.”
Earlier in June 3rd the IEBC had invited election stakeholders and the public for a demonstration of the technology to be used in the elections, it failed as the election commission admitted a technological failure.
Facebook Comments