Without a clean register of voters, IEBC will lack credibility

Unless the electoral commission does a full and transparent audit of the voter register, the August elections will be almost certainly compromised.

As Astrid Evrensel writes in Voter Registration in Africa: A Comparative Analysis, “the quality of the process and the product can determine the outcome of an election and consequently the stability of democratic institutions”.

The situation we are in now is analogous to 2007, when President Mwai Kibaki unilaterally appointed commissioners for the Electoral Commission of Kenya, despite the inter-parties agreement calling for political balance.

This created a perception of such bias that the only legitimate result was the electoral commission announcing his loss. It did not do that and we know the sad events that followed.

In the recent mass voter registration, the electoral commission interpreted “complementary mechanisms” to the electronic systems to be manual.

Several types of books were used including some from the disbanded commission. In some stations, people were told their details would be entered in the books later, while some did not have any books.

But the manual system was not the electoral commission’s only option. They could have used smart cards with each person’s biometric data inputted as a complementary mechanism. As one elections expert put it, “If Safaricom can handle M-Pesa electronically with more people, transactions and with many details on a daily basis, there is no reason why the commission should not handle a mere 19 million voters on biometric voter registrations and electronic voter identification machines”.

GRASSROOTS ORGANISATION

InformAction, a grassroots-based organisation with seven field teams in Isiolo, Kericho, Kisii, Kisumu, Maralal, Mombasa and Nyeri monitored the recent mass voter registration, using video and photographs to gather information and evidence in these and neighbouring counties.

Its findings were published in a report entitled “Election Watch 3: Gateway to the Ballot Box” publicly available at www.informaction.tv. (Full disclosure: I am a co-director at InformAction.)

The key findings included the fact that politicians and public officials in many places used coercive tactics to force people to register, behaving like ethnic warlords, with no repudiation by the electoral commission of these tactics. While many Kenyans now take this behaviour as normal, it is illegal, undemocratic and wrong.

There was also the issue of multiple registrations of different people using the same ID number, which the electoral commission stated affected about 128,000 people. It was never explained how this happened or who would be held accountable. The commission simply said that it would rely on a “first come, first vote” where multiple registrations had occurred. The perversity of this was highlighted by the fact that even high profile Kenyans like retired presidents Daniel arap Moi and Mwai Kibaki, former PM Raila Odinga and former VP Kalonzo Musyoka had their ID cards registering multiple people.

MANY ISSUES

A video clip accompanying the report shows a clerk in Mombasa entering the number 0 in the system and 2 names of alleged voters appearing as registered, and there were several reports of similar odd entries. There are many issues of concern noted in the report.

The situation can be remedied but only if the electoral commission is prepared to do the hard work of contracting a reputable and experienced group to audit the register, and not just to conduct voter verification.

Voter registration audits start from the beginning, which is the issuance of ID cards using the baseline from the Registrar of Persons, who should have all ID card numbers in some order. It would interrogate whether the issuance of ID cards is fair, equitable and just across the country, counter-checking if eligible voters were issued with ID cards. Then it would counter-check recorded deaths since March, 2013, and finally interrogate the multiple and dubious registrations.

If this is done transparently, then the commission may gain some modicum of trust.

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