The battle for millions of new voters has started, with the electoral commission launching mass registration yesterday.
The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Chairman Wafula Chebukati presided over the launch of the listing in Nakuru and assured Kenyans of a free, fair and credible 2022 General Election.
"Any other form of interference will not be tolerated. We are prepared and already we have drawn a roadmap to manage the 2022 General Election,” he said at the Nakuru Athletic Club.
While Kenya has a total of about 9.2 million eligible new voters, IEBC is seeking to enlist only six million— those who had either not turned 18 years by 2017 or those who had attained the age but failed to register.
The registration of six million new voters will raise Kenya's total voters register to 25 million, up from 19.6 million in 2017.
According to the 2019 census, Kenyans aged 15 years and above were 29 million, out of which at least 4.5 million have acquired IDs but are not registered as voters. But with official data from the National Registration Bureau indicating that nearly one million eligible youth may not be enrolled for lack of national identity cards, the government plans to use chiefs to deliver the documents.
"They are under instructions to pick up all the uncollected IDs from the registrar of persons and distribute them to owners. Vetting before the acquisition of IDs will also be enhanced," Rift Valley Regional Coordinator George Natembeya, who attended the launch, said. He said the government plans to reduce the period of processing an ID to only a week.
At least 1.7 million ID cards are lying idle in registration centres across the country, with arid and semi-arid areas registering huge drops in applications in 2020.
The voter registration will be conducted every day for the next 30 days, including weekends, according to IEBC acting Chief Executive Officer Hussein Marjan.
"We have distributed at least 7,720 Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) kits countrywide. Out of these, 2,900 will be used as back-up and 2,820 for registration. At least 4,350 will be for county assemblies and 290 for constituencies. Fifty-two Huduma centres across the country will also conduct new voter registration,” said the CEO.
Vast counties have also been allocated 128 kits each, with a majority of the 2017 voter registration centres across the country being gazetted for the exercise.
"The commission has created 2,583 additional centres, which have been gazetted for the enhanced voter registration exercise. Only 29 centres were de-gazetted due to change of names. Therefore, IEBC now has 27,241 registration centres countrywide,” said Mr Marjan.
Voters seeking to transfer from one polling station to another, will have to visit IEBC constituency offices, where they will be assisted to change their particulars.
The commission has deployed 11,067staff countrywide to conduct the exercise.
To ensure millions of students who have attained the age of 18 register as voters, the commission said it will take BVR kits to universities and colleges across the country.
"Students in higher learning institutions don't have to travel to home areas. They will be served at the institutions of learning,” said IEBC Commissioner Abdi Guliye. To cater for the projected increase in voter numbers, and the requirement that no polling station will have more than 700 voters, the IEBC estimates that Kenya will have 53,000 polling stations in 2022, up from the 40,883 in 2017 polls.
