Invest heavily to register untapped voters across Kenya

Peter Mositet

NAIROBI: Amid the fiasco surrounding the continued stay or exit of the current IEBC commissioners, the registrar of persons dropped a political bombshell last week.

It was revealed that a whopping 9.2 million Kenyans were eligible to be registered as voters but were not. This figure should worry the political class. Be it the ruling coalition or the Opposition, a slice of only ten per cent can drastically tilt the political arithmetic in favour of either side.

Further, earlier in the year, the same National Registration Bureau had revealed that 1. 2 million youths had attained age 18 but had not applied for Identity Cards. In fact, it said most are lost in alcoholism.
Records show we have 19 million active users of mobile money transfer Service (M-Pesa) who are, of course, registered citizens. If we have 15.8 million registered voters in the country, then it means of the 9.2 unregistered voters, about 3.2 million are actively involved in money transactions.

Jubilee cannot sit pretty on the illusion of the tyranny of numbers experienced in 2013. The Opposition cannot either. Maybe this is the segment they would need to cause a different poll outcome.
These eligible voters should force both sides to think about an effective voter registration drive. It could significantly work for either if at all a more comprehensive data would be produced on where these eligible voters are.

In the last voter registration drive in February and which is continuing at IEBC offices, the commission said it was conducting registration in 24,618 polling centres. We must admit that IEBC has never had full capacity to reach all eligible voters. I come from a pastoral region and the turn out to register largely depends on the timing of this exercise vis-à-vis the weather.

I assume a sizeable chunk of eligible voters are in these pastoral regions. IEBC must be alive to the fact that the single polling centres they used in several wards in pastoral areas, was woefully inadequate.
Some wards in these regions are bigger than some three constituencies in other counties. Yet, these constituencies would perhaps have a combined ten registration centres. This discrepancy in allocation of registration resources to marginalised areas has contributed to eligible voters’ apathy. For example, a herder would have to ponder whether to travel 20km to look for pasture or 40km to get a voter’s card.
IEBC must devise a creative strategy to reach the unreached. It is the right of every Kenyan to be accorded the constitutional right to vote. IEBC loves invoking the limited resources they are allocated to carry out these exercises. They must factor in quite a chunk of this to human resource and logistical needs to register new voters in vast regions.

They can also consider a more robust mobile voter registration drive. A consultative working formula between the IEBC and local community leaders would easily identify regions where people can be found at particular seasons. This would simplify the logistical nightmare that a clueless registration clerk would have trying to look for people in far-flung areas.

The IEBC must be accorded this support by relevant statutory bodies whose mandate has a bearing on voter registration. Reaching the unreached is a worthwhile investment by the government to rectify the historical discrimination meted on pastoral communities or other rural poor. With the current constitutional provision on a 50 Plus One threshold for presidential elections, no single vote should be ignored.