There was no activity in Kisumu when voting began on Thursday as residents kept off polling centres while IEBC officials could not be seen.
Polling stations that were meant to open at dawn stayed firmly shut and election officials were nowhere to be found.
Staunch NASA supporters issued threats, one of the reasons why members of the public kept off.
A fire lit in Kindele area, Kisumu, in opposition to the repeat presidential election, October 26, 2017. /FAITH MATETE
There was little movement in the town but matatu, tuk tuk and boda boda operators went about their regular business.
In the election on August 8, many including pregnant mothers with babies went to vote hours before polling stations opened at 6am.
Some spent the night at polling stations to avoid queuing for long while others blew vuvuzelas, sang and even had their breakfast at the locations.
But in the repeat election, there was no activity in Kisumu's
East, West and Seme constituencies.
The entrance to the Nyalenda Primary School polling station which Kisumu residents shut on the night of October 25, 2017. /FAITH MATETE
On Wednesday evening,
one nervous voting officer described his work in the city, the centre of major ethnic violence after a disputed election in 2007, as a "suicide mission".
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Kisumu Central returning officer John Ngutai said only three of his 400 staff had shown up for work and there was no security to deliver ballot boxes.
"We don't have any options," he told Reuters, as he and two presiding officers sorted thousands of ballot papers into piles, work that should have been completed the previous day.
Kisumu businessman Joshua Nyamori, 42, was one of the few voters brave enough to defy NASA chief Raila Odinga's call for a stay-away but could find nowhere to cast his ballot in the city of a million on the shores of Lake Victoria.
"I know it's not a popular move," he said. "Residents fear reprisal from political gangs organised by politicians. This is wrong."
IEBC officials deliver election materials the Kisumu Central tallying centre, October 26, 2017. /FAITH MATETE
In Migori, several hundred young men milled around on a main road littered with rubble and burning barricades, according to footage on NTV.
The National Super Alliance coalition, which has been accused of harassing
polling staff in the run-up to the vote, is likely to present a lack of open polling stations as proof the re-run, organised in less than 60 days, is bogus.
The fresh election follows an August vote whose result, a
victory for President Uhuru Kenyatta as announced by IEBC, was annulled by the Supreme Court due to procedural irregularities.
The US-educated son of
Kenya's founding father, has made clear he sees Thursday's vote as legitimate.
"I tell all our international partners that we will get through this," he said yesterday. "We cannot remain in a perpetual state of politicking."
Election materials delivered by IEBC officials at the Kisumu Central tallying centre, October 26, 2017. /FAITH MATETE
Shortcomings in
the rerun, already acknowledged by judges and the election commission, are likely to trigger legal challenges and could spark violence in a country riven by deep ethnic divisions.
A decade after 1,200 people were killed over another disputed election, many
Kenyans are braced for trouble although Raila backed off previous calls for protests and urged his supporters to stay out of the way of police.