Voting kicks off smoothly in Wajir by-election

Voting has kicked off smoothly amid tight security in the hotly-contested Wajir West Constituency by-election pitting Kanu’s Ibrahim Mohammed against Jubilee's Ahmed Kolosh.

Police officers manning gates to polling stations frisked voters and chased away idlers.

Voting in many polling stations started at 6am with locals arriving as early 5.30 am.

KIT FAILURE

In some stations, voting kits failed to detect voters’ fingerprints delaying the exercise and causing outrage among some voters.

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission officials had to fill Form 32A to allow affected voters cast their ballot.

The form confirms that voters not identified by the electronic voter identification devices have been identified in the print-out of the register of voters.

Some voters also complained that the exercise was too slow as only one voting kit per polling station.

Mr Adan Garad said that he had arrived at the polling station at 6am but only managed to cast his vote at 7.45am.

“During the General Election in 2017, things were moving faster compared to today’s by-election,” he said.

There are 75 polling stations serving the 27,444 registered voters in the vast constituency, with some as far as 200km from Griftu Pastoralist Training Centre which is the main tallying centre.

Presiding officers, their deputies and polling clerks spent the night at the polling stations under tight security to ensure voting kicks off early.

The elderly and disabled were given priority in the exercise.

The contest is seen as a battle between Rift Valley political heavyweights Deputy President William Ruto and Baringo Senator Gideon Moi even though none of them hit the campaign trail for their chosen men.

Orange Democratic Movement’s (ODM) candidate dropped out of the race to support Mr Kolosh, who had initially run on an ODM ticket in 2017 but has since decamped to Jubilee.