The voter registration exercise started this week across the country.
The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission is seeking to register between six and seven million new voters in 30 days beginning October 4.
Kenyans who have attained 18 years are eligible to register. To register, an individual must be a Kenyan and present either their national identity card or passport. The registration is in preparation for next year’s general election slated for August 9.
So far this week, the turn out has been poor and many Kenyans have not showed up to register and the daily targets have been disappointing to say the least. In almost all polling stations, IEBC voter registration clerks are merely staring at each other with no voter coming to the stations to register.
In one station for example, the IEBC had expected an average of 75 people to register as voters per day. However, to their dismay, on average this week, only five people per day showed for the exercise. This means less than 10 per cent are showing up to register.
The registration exercise is for new voters only. Majority of these will be aged between 18 and 23 years as it is this age bracket that attained the age of 18 since the last voter registration in 2017.
Being young and first time voters, they are new to the process and have not been exposed to election registration and related issues. For other forms of registration, including transfer of voters, this is not being done in the registration centres. It will have to be done at IEBC offices in the different constituencies.
From the assessment of the situation, there are various factors that have contributed to the poor turnout for registration. The first reason being that it is being done at a time when many Kenyans, particularly the young, are busy and hustling amidst harsh economic times.
The recent fuel hike has pushed the prices of commodities to all time high. Coupled with high unemployment levels, the economic challenges faced by many remains stifling. As a result, Kenyans have prioritised survival to voter registration, thus the low turnout.
Besides the economic challenges, Kenyans are also apathetic to elections. They have no confidence in the electoral process and consider it a sham and wastage of resources. In their minds, deep state always interferes with the will of the people and no matter how the people vote, the leader is imposed on them by the state. So, they see no need to engage in elections. This, coupled with the fact that there is little public awareness about the exercise, has further contributed to the low turnout.
On the part of IEBC, there are Kenyans who have raised concerns over the same electoral officials, who bungled the 2017 presidential election, remaining in office to oversee the 2022 polls. Some believe the chairperson and those who were in office then should have resigned after the last elections.
The fact that they are still in office has made Kenyans doubt the capacity of the electoral commission. Kenyans, therefore, see no need of registering for an exercise that is led by individuals who have failed before.
The misfunctioning BVR kits used in the registration are being sighted as evidence of poor IEBC leadership. It has been reported the kits are failing and taking up to 15 minutes to identify and/or register one voter.
Although the traffic is not heavy at the centres, it means if there were more people, the kits would not keep up. For items that were bought at such high prices, it is disappointing they are not working as expected, leading Kenyans to wonder why they should register for an exercise they consider “futile”.
There are many Kenyans who have demanded that the voter registration be a continuous process. Others have even questioned the need to register as voters in the first place. They argue national identity cards should be sufficient to vote.
With elections around the corner, we must find ways of addressing these concerns. For now, we must do what we can to get as many people as possible to register.
