The rollout of a fresh voter registration this week marks a major milestone in the electoral calendar. Voting is a democratic right of every eligible citizen and, ideally, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) ought to be doing the thing regularly.
This time round, the commission targets to register some six million new voters in the next four weeks. These are mainly young people who have attained age 18 and are, therefore, eligible to vote.
To achieve its target, the commission, working in concert with the provincial administration and security agencies, has to ensure eligible voters have all the requirements for registration. Often, youngsters who have attained the age of 18 do not get listed because of lack of identity cards.
Some chiefs and their assistants make it difficult for the young people to acquire IDs by creating many demands that lock out the youngsters. In this respect, we need a determination that all qualified youth will get their identification documents without any hitch.
Crucially important, the commission should secure credibility and integrity of the process. Electoral fraud starts right at the voter registration stage. Cases abound of politicians who import voters from other locations to their constituencies, wards or counties to shore up numbers and put them on a good stead to defeat their opponents during the general elections. Such practices must be curbed.
Related to this, the voter register must be kept clean. The whole purpose of biometric voter registration is to guarantee the sanctity of the information. But experience has shown that the voter register can be messy and, with the benefit of hindsight, it is never by default but design. The consequence of this is that some voters end up being locked out during the polls. And that only serves to undermine the democratic process.
Effective mobilisation is paramount to bring on board all qualified voters. Importantly, IEBC should guard against devious schemers and guarantee sanctity of the voter register.