Battle for 6 million new voters as listing starts

As if that is not enough, 1.7 million National ID cards are lying idle in many registration centres across the country and could be of no value to the elections if they are not collected by their owners.

Both the unregistered and the IDs not collected are almost evenly spread across the county, with only the arid and semi-arid regions registering higher numbers above the national average of 48 per cent drop in ID applications in 2020. Counties like Lamu saw the data for new applications for IDs drop by a massive 80 per cent in 2020.

For Deputy President William Ruto and his main rival ODM’s Raila Odinga, the task facing them is huge: they will have to encourage their supporters to turn out to register but also face the stark reality that more than a million eligible voters may not get their IDs on time to register in the next 30 days, and this could turn to be a disadvantage to either of them.

Speaking on Wednesday last week, ODM secretary-general Edwin Sifuna claimed that of the six million new voters the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) hopes to register during the mass exercise that kicks off tomorrow, more than half of the number is in the party’s traditional strongholds of Nyanza, Western, Coast and Nairobi.

Commensurate resources

“We implore the IEBC to deploy commensurate resources in those regions. We urge all party leaders at the grassroots and all members elected and nominated on the party ticket to now retreat to their respective areas to coordinate and support voter registration and mobilise people to collect their ID cards for purposes of voter registration,” said Mr Sifuna.

The mass voter registration runs for 30 days up to November 2.

The data on the drop of IDs applications and uncollected IDs are contained in the 2021 Economic Survey. The data shows that applications for new ID cards decreased by nearly a half in 2020, and in the absence of corrective measures by the government in the intervening period, it means those who failed to apply for the crucial document will not participate in the exercise that starts tomorrow.

“The decrease in applications of the ID cards was as a result of measures announced by the government to combat the Covid-19 pandemic,” the survey notes.

The data in the survey paints a grim reality of the ID cards situation among the youths that should concern all the major political actors who are lining up to participate in the August 8, 2022 poll.

Mr Odinga will from tomorrow be in Garissa town for the Azimio la Umoja Convention, the Northern-Kenya edition, which will bring together many of the counties that have seen their figures for ID applications significantly drop in 2020. It could be an opportunity for him to mobilise the Asal counties to register as voters.

At the DP’s camp, his spokesman Emmanuel Talaam told Sunday Nation that Dr Ruto has asked MPs in his camp to take the exercise seriously and mobilise eligible Kenyans to register.

“He is not focusing on any particular region. His focus is on the hustlers everywhere and whenever an opportunity arises, the MPs have been asked to spread the word to the hustlers to register to vote,” said Mr Talaam.

In western, Amani National Congress (ANC) party leader Musalia Mudavadi started mobilising the region to turn out for the registration. According to Mr Mudavadi, it is only through voter registration numbers that the region's voice can be heard.

Uncollected ID cards

"Voter registration is our agenda this month. We want the one million uncollected ID cards to be converted into votes. Let us come out and register as voters so that we are at par with Kiambu. From Monday, let us come out and take advantage because we want to increase the number of voters that will count when the time comes," Mr Mudavadi told mourners at the burial ceremony of the mother of ANC executive director Ms Margaret Ndanyi.

IEBC is seeking to enlist six million new voters who have turned 18 years since the last registration in 2017 or those who have the IDs but failed to register in the run-up to the 2017 election.

After the 2017 election cycle, the commission launched the continuous voter registration in October 2018 but it has netted 67,462 new voters on the roll and chairman Wafula Chebukati blames it all on the National Treasury.

“Inadequate funding confined the exercise to the 290 IEBC constituency offices,” he said on Friday during a meeting between the commission and the Political Party Liaison Committee (PPLC) to discuss election preparedness.

Read: IEBC targets to list 215,000 new voters in Nakuru

Frankline Mukwanja, the executive director of the Centre for Multiparty Democracy (CMD-Kenya), however, says that the low numbers achieved through the continuous voter registration are also due to a lack of motivation to register as Kenyans.

“Because voting is not compulsory, whoever wants to get your vote must come with incentives. The same happens with registration,” said Mr Mukwanja.

However, the failure by the state to issue ID cards in 2020 is expounded by the data in the Economic Survey that indicate that the number of ID cards produced and those collected reduced by 22 per cent and 19 per cent, respectively,  last year.

Applications for new ID cards dropped from 1.2 million in 2019 to 648,553 in 2020. The number of ID cards produced in the same period slumped from 1.03 million to 687, 907, while those collected reduced to 715,483 from 883,532 in 2019.

Nandi Senator Samson Cherargey yesterday questioned the rationale behind scaling down the issuance of the documents arguing that Covid-19 was an excuse to lock out young eligible people from the electoral process.

“So many other things are being done online – job applications, procurement, passport – what is this about applying ID cards that must be done through the physical process? This is a strategic scheme to undermine the youth from participating in the electoral process,” the senator said.

Read: Puzzle of missing 1.7m potential new voters

The senator said the ICT ministry should empower the youth and find innovative ways of ensuring that IDs are processed online to provide an opportunity for the youths to register as quickly as they can.

Kieni MP Kanini Kega, who chairs the Committee on Budget and Appropriations of the National Assembly, said yesterday that as politicians, they are determined to ensure that the exercise is a success and that all eligible voters are netted.

“We shall be on the ground to ensure that the registration kits are taken to where the demand will be highest. As a politician, I will ensure that the kits are taken to the youth,” he said.

And with the pandemic ravaging all and sundry, the MP admitted that a lot needs to be done to rectify the acquisition of the document given the challenges experienced in the past.

5.62 million applications

The National Registration Bureau received 5.62 million applications for new national ID cards in the four years between 2017 and 2020, according to the survey.

The figure coheres with the IEBC projection as the total number of new voters it seeks to bring into the fold once the exercise ends in the next four weeks.

The bureau produced 5.31 million ID cards during the period but only 3.62 million cards have been collected so far.

Read also: Time for vote hunt as IEBC targets 6m youth

This means that more than 1.7 ID cards are lying idle in various registration offices countrywide, waiting to be picked by owners. Some 1.23 million applications for new IDs were made in 2017, but the number dropped to 967,651 in 2018. It rose to 1.24 million in 2019 only to dip to 648,553 in 2020. Arid and Semi-Arid counties experienced a low number of applications, with Lamu recording the highest decrease at 80 per cent.

From 3,815 applications in 2019, Lamu only registered 763 new applications last year, Samburu registered 2,761 applications in 2020, down from 9, 037 the previous year, Elgeyo Marakwet from 18, 554 in 2019 to 5, 440 in 2020, while West Pokot reduced

West Pokot, Elgeyo/Marakwet and Samburu also experienced reduced applications at 73.8, 70.7 and 69.4 per cent, respectively.

However, applications in Garissa county increased by 35.3 per cent from 4,363 in 2019 to 5,901 in 2020.

Tana River County had the highest increase in the number of ID cards produced, which more than doubled from 3,184 in 2019 to 7,738 in 2020, mainly due to a Rapid Results Initiative (RRI) conducted in 2020.

Other Asal counties that registered increased production of ID cards were Wajir, Isiolo, Mandera, Turkana and Lamu at 9.9, 59.0, 36.0, 12.6, and 7.2 per cent, respectively.