We'll use digital register, says electoral officials

Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) has said they will use the digital register because the manual one is prone to misuse

IEBC commissioner Abdi Guliye said the commission arrived at the decision based on the Supreme Court judgment in 2017 to the effect that the primary register to be used in an election is the digital register.

He was responding to concerns raised during a stakeholder forum between the commission, the Kenya Private Sector Alliance (Kepsa) and Mkenya Daima in Nairobi yesterday.

"The commission is abiding by a Court of Appeal ruling in 2017 as a result of people going to court from a contest on the manual and digital register at the time," said Prof Guliye.

In 2017, NASA went to court seeking orders to overturn a High Court ruling that found that the commission had provided complimentary voter identification mechanism.

On Wednesday, Azimio presidential candidate Raila Odinga demanded that IEBC uses the manual register alongside the electronic one or else he will boycott the polls.

He said the manual register should be a backup plan should the electronic one fail to guard against rigging.

But IEBC Chief Executive Officer Marjan Hussein Marjan said they have put everything in place and the elections will be handled professionally.

Mr Marjan explained that there is no difference between the manual and the digital register and there is no way one's details can be in the manual register and miss in the digital register 

"Politicians like playing with the morale of Kenyans but that is the truth. The manual register that people are complaining about is printed out of the digital register they do not come from the moon," he said.

He argued that the commission is well prepared and has put everything in place to ensure the elections are free fair and verifiable. 

The electoral agency CEO said the backup complimentary kits through the Kenya Integrated Elections Management System (Kiems) will be good enough and no voter will be turned away.  He explained that if a voter turns up and cannot be identified using biometrics, then the presiding officers shall use a complementary mechanism of alpha numeric search in the presence of agents. 

If this still doesn't work, and the voters data is not popping up, then they will use the second option and replace the kits which he says will be doubled from the three that were used in the 2017 Genera Election. 

He said the commission will use six kits per ward for efficiency. "This type of technology cannot fail," he said. 

Marjan explained that the emergency six kits will be inserted SD cards that will contain the details of the register for a particular polling station that will be having challenges.

"So we simply remove and insert the card from that facility kit and transfer it to another spare kit that is available. Let me say that the details in that card are security protected and even if you take it to any computer, trust me you cannot read it and our it team can confirm," he said.

The CEO maintained that the manual register will be the last option if the emergency kits fail to work. 

On the issue of IEBC being sued, he said it was laughable.

"We are only implementing the order. We know others have gone to court but we are patient to see whether the High Court will overturn the Court of Appeal judgement which will be interesting," he said. 

Marjan said for one to be allowed to vote, they have to turn up at the polling station with the identification document that they used to register as a voter. 

"There are only two documents that one can use to register as a voter, national ID or passport," the commissioner said 

The CEO explained that before being issued with a ballot paper, the polling clerk will first check if the picture on the screen corresponds to that of the voter.

"When we register you as a voter, we take ten fingerprints, we only need one finger to identify you but we take ten to mitigate the risk of not being correctly identified," he said.