IEBC's delicate balancing act of vital logistics in polling stations

In April, IEBC announced 418,192 temporary vacancies to be filled ahead of the elections, which will have 46,233 presiding officers compared to the 2017 General Election where there were 40,883 presiding officers, while 31,987 served in 2013.

IEBC will require 46,233 presiding officers and an equivalent number of deputies. It has also recruited polling clerks/counting clerks (302,860), ICT clerks (580), and deputy constituency returning officers (290).

The Elections Act mandates IEBC to have a maximum 700 voters per polling station, and each presiding officer manages a polling station.

Apart from the IEBC staff, there will be two police officers per polling station, bringing the total to 92,466. There will be more officers at the 290 constituency tallying centres, others at the county and national tallying centres, which could push the number to more than 100,000 officers.

There are more than 101,000 police officers in the National Police Service (NPS) comprising the Kenya Police Service, Administration Police Service, and Directorate of Criminal Investigations.

In the past elections, NPS has also coopted officers from Prisons Department, Kenya Forest Service and the National Youth Service to bolster the numbers.

The August 9 General Election has attracted 16,100 candidates for the 1,882 political seats, including the presidency, governors, senators, woman representatives for the 47 counties, 290 members of the National Assembly and 1,450 ward representatives.

Interestingly, Muthara Ward in Meru County has attracted 24 contestants.

A polling station will have a presiding officer and a deputy, one queuing clerk, a voter register clerk, three ballot papers issuing clerks, one ballot box controller, who is also the inking clerk, political party/candidate agents, observers, two police officers and journalists.

The constituency tallying centre will have a Constituency Returning Officer and clerks, and one county Returning Officer.

At the national tallying centre there will be the IEBC chairman, commissioners, chief agents, observers, call centre operators, ICT project team, media centre for journalists and operational centre to coordinate logistics.

The logistics, IEBC said, will involve 40,770 vehicles ranging from pick-up to 10-tonne lorries to transport materials and equipment from the regional/county warehouses to the constituencies, and from the constituencies to regional/county warehouses.

The vehicles are expected to transport the ballot boxes from the constituency tallying centre to the polling station and back in the evening.

On the trip will be the ballot boxes, the presiding officer, party and candidates' agents as well as observers.

The second batch in the tender that was offered by IEBC was that of transporting polling officials, materials and equipment from constituency tallying centres to polling stations, and from the polling stations to the constituency tallying centre. The third was the provision of five-seater cars for the returning officers.

According to IEBC, Nairobi, with 3,643 polling stations, will use 3,378 vehicles. Kiambu will use 1,963, Nakuru 1,806, Kakamega 1,497, Meru 1,473, Kitui 1,454 and Machakos 1,332.

On Tuesday, 65.2 million ballot papers will be released to polling stations.