7 candidates listed as 'dead' in voters roll

Seven of the 92,277 listed as dead after an audit of the electoral register were actually registered candidates in the August 8 General Election, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission said on Thursday.

The agency used the scenario to explain why it reduced the figure of dead people flagged by the auditing company KPMG to 88,602, the number of names of people that was removed from the roll.

'STILL ALIVE'

“The figure of about 92,000 reduced by 3,765 after we realised that some of those listed as dead were actually people who are still alive who had gone to report their loved ones as dead but were erroneously listed as the ones who had died,” IEBC commissioner Roselyne Akombe told journalists on Thursday. “In fact, seven of them are candidates in the elections.”

Dr Akombe’s explanation, coming hot on the heels of an avalanche of questions about the existence of dead voters in the register, goes to show just how erratic Kenya’s data on the dead is, IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati explained.

“As a country, our record of dead people is very poor and there is a need to empower the Civil Registration Services (CRS) so that we enhance its capacity of keeping records,” said Mr Chebukati.

Even then, a confident Mr Chebukati said, it was still unfeasible for “dead voters to vote”.

He said: “People die every day. There are some that will even die on August 7, just hours to the elections.

“We really cannot have a register completely rid of dead voters. But I am 100 per cent confident that the technology will work and no dead voter will vote because they have no biometrics”.

The press conference was about the authenticity of the voter register and the IEBC’s confidence of how the technology it has displayed will prevent mischief of dead voter’s details being used to rig the elections.

VERY IMPORTANT

For IEBC, it was so important that they used half of the 90-minute briefing to explain to journalists how the elections kits will work and exactly why any Kenyan will not be allowed to vote twice, using a dead voter’s documents, even if they are still on the register.

“Dead voters cannot vote because they have no biometrics,” IEBC official Chris Msando said in the demo. “For us, everyone, except the 5,000 or so that do not have them, must place their fingers even before we do anything else.”

He said an attempt at voting twice would be flagged by the kits.

PARLIAMENT RECALL

The press conference came just hours after Mr Musalia Mudavadi, a co-principal in the National Super Alliance coalition, asked for Parliament to be recalled for a special sitting to discuss an audit of the register by KPMG.

“Since the issue of a clean register is of great public importance, urgent and exceptional, and will determine whether Elections 2017 will be free, far and credible or not, Nasa calls for a recall special sitting of Parliament to discuss the KPMG Audit Report and other election-related violations in the conduct of elections by IEBC,” Mr Mudavadi said in the statement sent to newsrooms by his press secretary, Mr Kibisu Kabatesi.

Though the Elections Act says the IEBC should submit the audit report to Parliament after it is done and another one within 30 days of its implementation, it does not specify what the House should do with the report.

DECEASED PERSONS

“Nasa is aware also that KPMG identified 1,037,260 deceased persons in the Register of Voters,” Mr Mudavadi argued. “IEBC announced it had deleted only 92,277—later reduced to 88,602—dead people from the register. There is, therefore, an unaccounted-for balance of 968,558 dead voters in the register that IEBC is intend on retaining.”

But IEBC disputed the narrative with Dr Akombe insisting that CRS only gave them a list of 435,173 dead persons and not 797,835 as they had earlier said.

Mr Chebukati also said IEBC could no longer edit the list of the 19,611,423 Kenyans eligible to vote or the 14,524 candidates for the 1,882 elective seats as it would be impossible to load the 45,000 kits with the requisite data.