Kenya ready for mobile voting system

The showdown in Parliament yesterday could have been avoided if the warring coalitions appreciated how far the country has developed in the usage of information communication technologies (ICT).

The most contentious issue about the new election laws was whether the country should have a manual system of voting as a fall-back plan should the Biometric Voter Identification devices and the electronic results transmission system proposed fail, like in the 2013 polls.

The Opposition believes a manual system leaves room for Jubilee to manipulate the polls while the Government side sees refusal to have a manual system as a plot by the Opposition to reject the outcome of the 2017 elections even when results of, say, one county or ward are not transmitted electronically. For Jubilee, the fear of a repeat of 2013 technology failure looms large.

What was lost in the debate is the fact that Kenya has achieved tremendous growth in the use of ICT. Kenya is home to M-Pesa; a world-recognised and trusted money transfer system. Billions of shillings are transacted daily without complaints.

Banks have started dishing out loans to clients via mobile platforms without clients visiting their offices. We pay power bills, pay for TV and even buy goods at supermarkets and alcohol in bars using the mobile phone.

Not to be left behind, the Government has created platforms where its services are accessible online and payments for the same done through mobile platforms.

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Here, I have in mind services like application for birth certificates, registration of motor vehicles, transfers and even booking for motor vehicle inspection. For the past few years, parents have been checking KCPE and KCSE exam results of their children using their phones. This week, they used the mobile phones to find out the schools their children will join in January.

So why have Parliament, IEBC, the Cabinet and all political actors failed to figure out that it's time Kenya developed a system where voting is done via mobile phone and results tallied and transmitted immediately? The Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) wants voter identification gadgets used across the country so that dead voters do not resurrect on Election Day.

In all the transactions where we use the mobile phone, the mobile number; which must be registered, is used for identification. No one is allowed to register without a national Identity card, just like during voter registration. Therefore, the identity card number is the single most important mode of identification in this country. All ID holders are presumed adults and Kenyan citizens.

All the country needs is a mobile voting platform where the ID number applies as the identifier just like the voters' identification gadgets that CORD wants (I hear an ingenious Kenyan has developed such a platform already and named it M-Kura!).

Mobile penetration in this country stands at 88 per cent, according to the Communication Authority report of September 2015. The number of subscribers has hit 37 million. It means that even those without mobile phones but have IDs would only need to use a friend’s phone and vote.

The country could decide to have days of voting so that on the first day, we elect the President and Members of Parliament while on the second we decide who will be the county governors and county ward representatives.

With such a system we would know the results of the presidential election by 7pm on Election Day and the list of elected MPs would be available almost immediately on the IEBC website and in the following day’s newspapers.

The billions spent on ballot printing, logistics, transport, procurement of BVR devices and hiring of thousands of election staff across the country would better be used in expanding mobile networks in remote villages which would have the added advantage of increasing internet penetration in neglected areas.

The other issue CORD had raised regarding the polls is verification and auditing of the voter register by a reputable firm. IEBC can as well appoint a reputable firm to audit the polls just to make sure no person voted twice.

At the same time, there would be no need to spend money doing manual registration of voters as is the norm. All Kenyans with ID cards would be eligible to vote and all they would need to do is to get registered by sending the details of their county, ward and constituency to the mobile platform for registration.

The national registration bureau would have details of all registered Kenyans who have died and their registration numbers would be blocked and, therefore, the dead voters would be rendered inactive on the election day.

The use of technology has been tried elsewhere with big success. Kenya can teach the world how to use mobile phones to vote just like we did with money transfer and achieved 100 per cent success.