Opposition leaders’ 10 million votes mantra is definitely far-fetched

Our ‘politico-biblical’ Joshua appears to be prophesying a miracle for Kenya. He seems to be telling us that for the first time in history, every registered voter will wake up on August 8, and make their way to their respective polling stations to perform their democratic duty. I make this deduction from the fact that Raila Odinga has declared that there will be 10 million votes casts for NASA on election day. One can only assume this number was arrived at by applying the 50 per cent + 1 calculation on the 19 million registered voters, then adding half a million to the result to come up with a clean, rounded-up ‘hashtag-able’ figure.

But there is a problem. When a little logic is applied, three factors negate this assertion. The first is history, the second is the demographic of registered voters and the third is good old common sense. Let us begin with history and interrogate voter turn-out. By way of comparison, world electoral history indicates that a voter turn out of one-hundred percent is unattainable.