IEBC cleaning up voters’ roll

The electoral commission has started cleaning up the voters’ roll before opening it for verification early next month.

It will delete names of individuals found to have registered more than once and address other anomalies before the list is finally gazetted.

On Friday, IEBC released a provisional roll capturing voter registration details from all wards in the country.

The list revealed that Rift Valley Province had recorded the highest number of registered voters at 3,373,853 out of the 14.3 million national tally. Central was second with 2,190,477, Eastern (2,092,883), Nyanza (1,954,756), Nairobi (1,778,908), Western (1,434,987), Coast (1,164,083), and North Eastern (347,457).

In the listing of counties, Bungoma is in the bottom 10 after it ranked 38th out of the 47 counties.

Narok County is ranked 39th, while Trans Nzoia, Kwale, Samburu, West Pokot, Garisa, Wajir, Turkana and Mandera complete the bottom 10.

The report also indicated that Starehe constituency in Nairobi County registered the highest number of voters in the country with a record of 138,360 which is 79 per cent above the target.

Westlands, Lamu East, Makadara, Embakasi East, and Thika Town also surpassed targets.

Education Minister Mutula Kilonzo said Cord was impressed with the numbers and was now busy working on how to win the elections.

“We are happy with the registration report and we are now planning our victory,” he said.

At the same time, the electoral commission has clarified that a requirement for party supporters to submit copies of their voter’s cards during nomination of candidates was null and void.

The requirement is inconsistent with the latest amendments to the Elections Act (2011) made through the Statute Law (Miscellaneous Amendments) Act (2012), the commission said.

The changes to the Act was done by Parliament among other consolidated amendments to various Acts, to regularise the requirement under Section 5 (3) of the Elections Act.

It states that any Kenyan citizen who is 18 years old as evidenced by either a national identity card or a Kenyan passport and whose name is not in the voters’ register shall be registered upon application, in the prescribed manner to the Commission.

Raised matter

The essence of the amendment was to dispense with the requirement of a voter’s card as one of the documents entitling a voter to vote in an election. It resulted in deletion of the definition of a voter’s card from the Act.

It was in line with this that the electoral body did away with the issuance of a voter’s card upon registration.

Early this month, the Safina party raised the matter with the commission.