A credible IEBC must be voter-centric, not politician-centric

IEBC Logo [Elvis Ogina,Standard]

It goes without saying that Friday’s ruling by the High Court,  “the election is now, and the election is later,” was a bolt from the blue.  Like Schrodinger’s cat that was both alive and dead at the same time before the box was opened, we were constitutionally supposed to be lining up to vote today, but we’ve deferred this to 2027; yet the 2027 ballot will be invalid, but is allowed to proceed.  Expectedly, it’s now up to the higher courts to carefully prise open this ballot box.

For now, I will quietly leave my tracker at Day 1,464, which is 1,463 days since the last election.

Today, let’s turn to the 364 days to the election, including the 10 August 2027 election day itself.  And focus on the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) because this is where public confidence in the electoral process and result ultimately resides.  “Public” is the keyword.

To begin, a year may be long for citizens, but it is dangerously short for electoral preparations.  Yet, we’re seeing IEBC still “pushing electoral reforms” through Parliament at this late stage.  It isn’t just questions about, say, livestreaming results, but the timing of these proposals.  Only now are campaign financing limits and rules being proposed, with the official election campaign period having been announced earlier.  The fact of the matter is politicians on all sides have dismissed them in practice; we are pretty much already deep into campaigns, and there is cash flying around.

Then there was last week’s threat by the IEBC Chair over not being able to conduct an election in a “volatile environment”, which came across as “we are not prepared for a competitive election”.  This is where conspiracy theories abide; does “we” suggest a desire for postponement?  Don’t forget, in its usual “Oliver Twist” style, that IEBC is reminding us of inadequate funding.

And while there is likely more that the Commission is quietly doing to properly prepare for 2027, it is nothing less than alarming that, a year to election, they’ve just commenced hiring in the core Secretariat, from Secretary/CEO to the seven directors in senior management, even as we now have a second Acting Secretary/CEO in six months, to act for 2-3 months.  So we’re going into 2027 with two-year Commissioners potentially supported by one-year executives.  Yes, there’s an existing ground crew, including County Managers, but this doesn’t look like readiness at all.

To repeat, IEBC must be the primary source of public confidence in the 2027 electoral process and result.   But this requires a mindset shift in the Commission to make it more voter-centric.

Here’s an illustration. Which slogan sounds better?  “Your Vote; Your Voice” or “Your Voice: Your Vote”?  Communication 101 will tell you the second wins; it starts with the human being, then the action; the first requires a transaction to “see/hear” you.  IEBC runs with the first one.

But it’s more than this.  The late former Prime Minister Raila Odinga loved to describe electoral contests using footballing analogies.  In these contests, IEBC was the referee and the voters were the fans.  More subtly, voters weren’t just fans, they owned the tourney, the stadium, the teams.

That’s why “the people decide”.  Most other politicos, as well as IEBC, don’t actually see the fans, instead treating them as the actual football itself, to be passed, kicked, or headed to score goals.  For politicians, this is the difference between people (fans and owners) and numbers (the ball).  For IEBC, it is the difference between a politician-centric mindset and a voter-centric one.

Let’s quickly contrast these mindsets through the broad pre-election, election and post-election phases.  Before the election, a politician-centric IEBC responds to pressure from politicians to treat the issuance of IDs and voter registration as tools for gerrymandering, intentionally creating bottlenecks in opposition strongholds while accelerating them in friendly zones.  A voter-centric IEBC would be running a continuous, automatic voter registration process rather than a seasonal event, building on ID information integrated with national population and civil registries.

During the election, a politician-centric IEBC panders to the counterintuitive political preference for technical or other loopholes, like, say, KIEMS kits struggling, forcing the use of manual registers to create ambiguity in the process (think hard about this).  A voter-centric IEBC prioritizes KIEMS kit functionality in a way that makes any failure an infringement of the voter’s constitutional voting right, not simply an administrative mishap.  Finally, post-election, a politician-centric IEBC agrees with politicians that results should be a “black box” affair, allowing “top-down” announcements while voters are left in uncertainty.  A voter-centric IEBC permits citizens to track results from openly accessible public portals, and independently confirm outcomes.  Where is IEBC today?

Of course, it’s more complex than this, and voters as citizens must also play their role.  But one still prays for the day when IEBC begins to think of its electoral management from the perspective of the voter’s UX/UI (user experience, user interface). That’s the people side of their core work.

There’s also the numbers side to this voter-centricity.  So let’s close this piece with a data barrage.  If we dig up the rough numbers for August 2022, sourced from different places, and chaotically organised, we had an adult population around 29.8 million, about 26.8 million with IDs and 3 million without.  Actual registered voters were 22.1 million, as we recall, of whom 14.3 million actually voted.  The short story here is 15.4 million Kenyans did not participate in electing the current leadership, or put differently, the election was decided by less than half of our adults.

One would imagine there are lessons in this picture as we go into 2027.  But what is the tentative data telling us?  Eligible adults with IDs are at 33.9 million (1.3 million without IDs), with an IEBC voter registration target of 28.5 million (they are now at 24.7 million, so there is 3.8 million to go).  But, if we remember from 2022, the voter register audit suggested at least a million ineligible voters (dead, duplications or inaccuracies), and there is no indication that the register has been cleansed. 

Why didn’t we do this the other way round?  IEBC starts from the ideal 33.9 million target and then works backwards to reality.  Yes, I’m throwing this at IEBC today knowing it’s a larger question for all of our population and civil registration agencies.  It’s not just elections where these numbers matter, but the economy, education and other socio-economic provisions.  And to be fair, while IEBC cannot determine voter turnout, its own actions are an important influence.

But let’s finish at the end.  Is it time, and is there enough time, to get a voter-centric IEBC before 2027?  An IEBC that makes the voter the owner of the game, and not the football it's played with?  Recall, for the umpteenth time, that three E’s animate Kenyans: Elections, Education, Economy!