Vote hunt next battle frontier for big parties

Locals queue at Biashara Ward in Nakuru on March 14, 2016 to register as voters. Leaders have urged more to register. PHOTO | SULEIMAN MBATIAH | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • On Wednesday, Nasa held a meeting with its aspirants and drummed up the message of the need for Opposition supporters to register as voters in large numbers.
  • Among the counties, Nairobi has the highest number of unregistered voters with IDs followed by Kakamega, with 417,035, Kiambu with 373,870 and Meru with 327,571.

Jubilee and the newly formed Opposition alliance, Nasa, are preparing for a tough political dwell from Monday, when the listing of voters kicks off countrywide.

On Thursday, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) said that the country has 9.1 million unlisted potential voters with national identity cards.

According to the commission, another 2.9 million Kenyans issued with identity cards in the last 20 years have died.

There has been debate over the cleanliness of the voters’ registers with questions being asked on whether “dead voters” participated in past General Election.

On Wednesday, Nasa held a meeting with its aspirants and drummed up the message of the need for Opposition supporters to register as voters in large numbers.

Today, President Uhuru Kenyatta is scheduled to meet 16,000 Jubilee aspirants and he is expected to give them one message: to make sure that they lead the voter registration drive in their respective areas.

The IEBC is hoping to register 6.1 million voters in the drive to be launched on Monday.

“We are urging unregistered Kenyans to come out in large numbers and register,” IEBC Chief Executive Officer Ezra Chiloba said.

He also urged political leaders to mobilise their supporters to register as this would not only help the commission meet its target, but would also be good for them.

According to the IEBC, Rift Valley has the highest number of unregistered voters who have ID cards — 1.8 million.

It is followed by Eastern, with 1.4 million. Nairobi and Nyanza have 1.2 million each, while Western has 1.1 million.

Coast and central Kenya each have a million. Northern Kenya has the lowest with only 166,983 yet to be registered.

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Among the counties, Nairobi has the highest number of unregistered voters with IDs followed by Kakamega, with 417,035, Kiambu with 373,870 and Meru with 327,571.

The others are Mombasa with 343,544, Nakuru with 313,435, Kisii 304,631 and Garissa with 61,136.

Both the ruling Jubilee coalition and the Opposition Cord, now organising as Nasa, are planning to use the aspirants to mobilise their supporters to register.

When he met Opposition leaders in Nairobi, Mr Odinga challenged youth to register in large numbers to effect change.

“We will deal with the election laws — we promise you that — but you must all go out, in every town, village, home, church, school, bus stop every single day and not rest until everybody you meet is a registered voter to send a mass message to Jubilee that they must go home!” he said.

ANC party leader Musalia Mudavadi also said that each aspirant in Opposition strongholds must play a key role in the registration of new voters in their areas.

“We will continue holding joint meetings to sensitise and stress to our supporters the importance of taking a voter’s cards, the mass action we were planning should now be demonstrated in massive voter registration by our supporters,” he said.

“We will engage everybody to mobilise our supporters to register as voters, the churches, women’s and youth groups, cooperative societies, everybody.”

On Thursday, Starehe MP Maina Kamanda said Jubilee had told its aspirants to focus on voter registration for the next one month.

“We will do nothing else but mobilise our people to register,” he said.

Aspirants will be expected use their resources to register voters “because these are the people who will vote for them during nominations and the elections”.