Nairobi — The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) has maintained that manual registers will only be used in case the digital registers fail to work.
Speaking during an engagement meeting with members of the Kenya Private Sector Alliance (KEPSA), IEBC commissioner Abdi Guliye said this will comply with a ruling issued by the court of appeal in 2017.
The commissioner spoke a day after Azimio La Umoja One Kenya presidential candidate Raila Odinga declared “no manual register, no elections” in what has touched off a storm in the political circles.
His main competitor Deputy President William Ruto who is vying under the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) has laughed off the demand, saying “my competitor is scared of defeat why is he insisting on a manual register.”
On Thursday, the commission said it had doubled up the number of Kenya Integrated Election Management System (KIEMS) kits in case some fail to work.
“This time we are saying instead of three kits as were the case in 2017 per ward, we have doubled them to six kits. If there is a total failure, we will replace the kits. If it fails, we will bring the third kit. Assuming all the kits are not working, that is the time when we can revert to a manual register,” he added.
He asked politicians to stop playing with the psychology of the citizens as the details on the digital register are the same as the ones on the manual register.
“The manual register that people are complaining about is printed out of the digital register. So, it is not coming from the moon. There will be no way you will be in the manual register which is in the book and not be in the digital register,” he added.
Guliye further alluded that the manual register provides an avenue for rigging elections but the commission wants to seal this loophole as someone can easily claim one voted by feeding their data on the manual register to the kits. He said this would help avoid a scenario that happened in 2017 where the voters for the presidential candidates were much higher than that of the other elective seats resulting in the nullification of the presidential election by the Supreme court.
“The commission’s priority is to use a digital register and there is a reason why we are interested to use a digital register. The manual register is prone to misuse. The commission is trying to prevent such mischief,” he stated.
He asked the politicians insisting on using the manual register to table their reasons since the IEBC is trying to provide a level plain field for all the 16,098 candidates that have been cleared by the election management body.
“Anyone trying to criminalize not using the hard copy register must be asked their reasons for insisting on that,” he said.