Ballot papers for August elections arrive in Kenya

The first batch of the 132 million ballot papers to be used in the August General Election have arrived in the country, the elections agency has announced.

Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) chairman Wafula Chebukati will receive the first batch of the ballot papers at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) at 10 am.

“Today, we are receiving the first batch of ballot papers arriving today. All ballot papers will arrive from JKIA. No ballot papers are arriving from Uganda,” Mr Chebukati told a Kenya Private Sector Alliance (Kepsa) meeting in Nairobi.

IEBC will print a total of 132,722,748 ballot papers, being one for each of the 22,120,458 registered voters for the six elective seats.

“All ballot papers are serialised. We are printing ballot papers, which is the number of registered voters. And then we will print the exact same number for the six elective seats. There is nothing like extra ballot papers being printed. We usually do not have 100 per cent voter turnout. So, we will not have any extra papers,” Mr Chebukati said.

He added: “If a polling station has 600 voters, those are only ones that have been printed no more as claimed.”

The IEBC boss disputed claims that there was a plot to have ballot papers sneaked in through Uganda and stuffed in the different polling stations, in favour of one political divide.

“The ballot papers have security features. They will come in from one place,” he said.

The presidential elections ballot paper, he said, will be the last one to be printed.

With 32 days to the General Election, Mr Chebukati said all plans were in place.

He, however, did not say how the ballot paper printing begun before the official gazettement of qualified candidates.