MAHIRI-ZAJA: Poll integrity damaged by flawed register

It is rather unfortunate that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission is yet to conduct an audit of the voter register, five months to the election.

The process should have been concluded by now.

An audit of the voter register is very important in an electoral cycle. It is the only way you can clean the register by removing dead voters while ensuring the integrity of the process.

The last election was in 2017 and there was enough time for auditing the register.

There is now no time left to conduct the exercise.

What the electoral agency can do now is to vouch for the credibility of the register. This is the only way that the IEBC can assure the credibility of the process but as it is now, the integrity of the polls cannot be guaranteed.

The IEBC needed to have done the exercise a while back. Since time is of the essence, IEBC can do the process of de-duplication with the National Registration Bureau, which is responsible for the registration of national IDs. 

It is also important for the Department of Immigration to come in for those using passports.

There is also a legal process of certification of the register before the general election. We will now just hope that this is the process we will depend on for assurance that we will have a credible election.

The electoral agency should have made time for the audit. They know that this is an election where stakes are very high.

All our elections have had high stakes but this particular one is too high as the President will not be seeking reelection.

To maintain the credibility of the process, the IEBC should have gone the extra mile to do what it needed to do to make sure Kenyans go to the ballot with a clean voter register.

Former IEBC vice chair spoke to the Star

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