The government recommended two years ago to the IEBC chiefs that they abandon voter registration and use national identity cards for voting. Some 9.2 million Kenyans have not yet registered as voters for the 2017 general election.
In a letter to chairman Isaack Hassan, Treasury CS Henry Rotich said with changes to the law, the IEBC can upload the data of all ID card holders and convert it into a voters’ register.
The letter, a copy of which the Star has obtained, was tabled before the Parliamentary Joint Select Committee on the IEBC. “Voter registration is a legal requirement,” Rotich said. Mexico, he said, has successfully employed the technique.
“We would like to have discussions on this matter with IEBC, National Registration Bureau and National Treasury to explore the possibility of how this proposal can be effected before the next general election,” Rotich said in the May 30, 2014 letter. It remains unclear whether discussions were held.
According to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission schedule, there is only one mass voter registration planned for early next year, before the August 8 elections.
The letter recommended operational, policy and legal reforms to cut down costs. Rotich suggested the IEBC legal department stop outsourcing the prosecution of election offences. “It defeats the purpose of setting up a directorate with permanent staff whose function is to outsource to law firms and provide them with background information,” he said.
Treasury suggested that the settling of electoral disputes be left to the judiciary since most of the cases handled by the IEBC still end up in the High Court. It dissuaded the electoral agency from having permanent staff in some departments, such as delimitation of boundaries, which is done every eight to 12 years.