Low number of registered voters should be a cause for concern

This photo dated February 16, 2016 shows people registering to vote at Jomo Kenyatta Sports Ground in Kisumu. PHOTO | TOM OTIENO | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • What we should be discussing right now is how to issue more Kenyans with identity cards, how to register them as voters, and how to lure them into the voting booths.
  • Most of what is going on now amounts to a series of side-shows that will only result in a large number of presidential contenders sharing a relatively tiny number of votes, leading to disputes over the results.
  • This is not representative democracy.

Early this year, there was a minor uproar when the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) purported to impose an unrealistic deadline on when the registration of voters should end. The IEBC had no business announcing the closure of voter registration because such deadlines don’t exist in law. The registration should be continuous.

Although the IEBC cited budgetary constraints—it was given a meagre Sh36 billion instead of the Sh45 billion it had sought—there is no indication that the matter was revisited, or that the registration resumed countrywide.

Now the chickens have come home to roost, judging by the admission by the National Registration Bureau that at least 9.2 million identity card holders will miss out because they are not registered voters. Out of 26.3 million Kenyans who have been issued with identity cards, the IEBC wanted to register an additional four million. It didn’t happen, though adequate funds were reportedly made available later. That is very sad for our nascent democracy. We cannot claim with any certitude that these nine million souls were deliberately disenfranchised. You cannot force anyone to register as a voter. And there is very little anyone can do, besides persuasion based on civic education, to counter the maleficent influence of apathy.

UNIVERSAL REGISTRATION

But can the government and its organs say with a straight face that it pulled out all the stops to facilitate universal registration of voters? Could this information about the shortfall have come out had officials of the National Registration Bureau not been summoned by the joint select committee on electoral reforms to present its views on the matter? I doubt it would have happened. Such anomalies are rarely rectified until it is too late, and then people start coming up with all sorts of excuses and conspiracy theories.

But the IEBC may not be solely to blame. One of the problems with the sustained assault on the electoral commission for the better part of this year is that it has hardly had the time or space to do its job. You cannot keep yelling at your worker that you will sack him and then expect the best outcome. In fact, what will happen in such a situation is that the worker will lose focus. In the midst of the political tantrums we keep throwing, we may have forgotten that the IEBC is peopled by human beings whose first duty is their own survival.

This is not to excuse the IEBC in any way. Registering voters is one of its core functions, and it should not have been sidetracked, either by the national government or by the lynch mob that has been baying after its blood. So, is there any realistic way forward?

This is important because statistics tell a startling tale. Out of a population of 42 million, it is estimated that 30 million are adults of sound mind. Of these, around 26 million have been issued with national IDs, but at the moment, only 14 million can vote.

And then, of course, depending on the turnout, maybe only 10 million will do so during the elections, which means that a mere quarter of the population is likely to choose their leaders. Doesn’t this mean that only a tiny fraction gets to elect the men or women who will run the affairs of their country?

It is not too late to register a lot more people in the time remaining until the next election if there is political will and not too many distractions from people who read sinister motives in every move made by the country’s electoral bodies.

The rigging of elections begins when people are either disenfranchised or too easily give in to apathy for one reason or the other. What we should be discussing right now is how to issue more Kenyans with identity cards, how to register them as voters, and how to lure them into the voting booths. Most of what is going on now amounts to a series of sideshows that will only result in a large number of presidential contenders sharing a relatively tiny number of votes, leading to disputes over the results. This is not representative democracy.