IEBC forges ahead with key electoral activities but trust deficit remains

The 30-day exercise will run daily until April 28, covering all days of the week, Monday to Sunday.

However, even as IEBC is targeting about 6.5 million new voters, the commission is still facing questions on the credibility of the voter register and its operations.

The commission has to grapple with a trust deficit, budgetary constraints, recruitments of a new Chief Electoral Officer and procurement of key electoral materials as the clock ticks towards 2027.

Among the fresh areas of friction include a plan by the commission to work with the Ministry of Interior’s civil registration department to share data to help in cleaning the voter register.

Chairman Erastus Ethekon says data-sharing arrangements with both public and private institutions are conducted within strict legal frameworks to ensure identity verification, compliance and fraud prevention, with partners being briefed once the process is in place.

“Therefore, the commission has engaged the State Department of Immigration and Citizen Services on various areas of collaboration,” he said.

“Including establishing a secure Application Programming Interface link with an Integrated Population Registration System to ensure that only legitimate ID and passport numbers are used.”

The commission is also coming under pressure to clean up the old register in line with a pre-2022 audit by KPMG that found dead voters in the register.

The audit report also found duplicate records totalling 481,711 and voters said to have registered with identity cards that do not belong to them who totalled 226,143.

A total of 246,465 records of deceased voters were also picked. Another 164,269 registration were linked to invalid registration documents (IDs and passports).

The report unearthed 14 mysterious Returning Officers running the system, indicating that the mysterious ROs were able to "transfer, delete, insert, trigger, truncate and update the voters register at will", and "one user, Postgres, had superuser access privileges".

The total record in the Smartmatic register of voters that were provided to KPMG on May 5, 2022 was 21,970 597, including all biographic and biometric details.

Smartmatic undertook duplication of the 2,184,472 records against the 21,970,597 records to generate a fully deduplicated register containing 21,710,728 voters, which was given to KPMG on May 18,2022.

DP leader and ex-Attorney General Justin Muturi raised the alarm.

“A comprehensive fresh audit of the register of voters must be done,” he said.

“In addition, the IEBC, National Civil Registration Bureau and Immigration services must work together to confirm the details of all registered voters and their valid documentation.”

Activist Ndung’u Wainaina wants the IEBC to clean the current voter register as mass voter registration begins.

She also asked for the agency to cancel the tender issued to Smartmatic for election technology management as part of building trust in the agency and cleaning up the poll register.

“No voter biometrics registration should be done with the Kiems kits provided by Smartmatic,” Wainaina says.

“Smartmatic has supplied the IEBC with critical election technology, including biometric voter registration systems, Kiems kits for voter identification and results transmission infrastructure. The kits and technology must be discarded, and new kits must be acquired afresh.”

Opposition figures are also demanding the commission to competitively recruit and appoint a substantive CEO following the departure of Marjan Hussein in February and naming of Moses Sunkuli as acting CEO.

Wiper leader Kalonzo Musyoka emphasised that the IEBC must "properly advertise" the CEO position to ensure integrity ahead of the 2027 General Election, and specifically opposed the potential permanent appointment of Sunkuli.

Last week, the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee of the National Assembly held a two-day high-level consultative engagement in Mombasa with key electoral stakeholders as part of an ongoing workshop on electoral reforms ahead of the polls.

On the second day of the workshop on Tuesday, JLAC engaged the IEBC, the Judiciary Committee on Elections and the Witness Protection Agency to deliberate on proposals aimed at strengthening the country’s electoral framework.

JLAC chairman George Murugara said the engagements sought to assess institutional readiness and address emerging challenges in the management of electoral processes.

“The discussions focused on critical areas, including election preparedness, proposed legal and administrative reforms, the usability of Kiems kits, stakeholder engagement, voter education and election security,” he said.

IEBC is also struggling with budgetary allocation as it seeks Sh63 billion to conduct next year’s polls, a figure that Parliament has rejected.

“Funding of these institutions and agencies is paramount,” Murugara said.

“A believable election is paramount for our country. The funding must, thus, be adequate. As the National Assembly and the budget-making House, JLAC has committed to this.”