How Kenya will hold the most expensive election in the region

JKIA police officer inspects the first batch of ballot papers. [Denish Ochieng, Standard]

The mistrust in Kenya’s politics is pushing the cost of conducting the election ever higher, setting new benchmarks of how much the taxpayer must fork out to elect new leaders.

For the second consecutive election, Kenya is set to hold one of the most expensive polls in any of the developing nations, shadowing the budgets of neighbouring countries.

According to sources from the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) as well as reports from research institutions, the cost of conducting the election in Kenya is pushed even higher by security measures.

The electoral agency yesterday said to print this year’s election the commission had spent Sh3.2 billion. Kenya had ordered the printing of 22,120,258 papers to be used for each of the six elective seats in the August 9 General Election.

IEBC has attempted to explain that the length of the ballot paper resulting from a large number of aspirants, as well as the security features, increased the cost.

The ballot papers further need to have special packaging, be transported by air, as well as incorporate a traceability mechanism.

Kenyan ballot papers are printed abroad. They were printed in Britain in 2013, and Dubai in 2017 and are being printed in Greece this year. It is also supposed to take representatives of the candidates to Greece to the factory where the printing of the ballots is taking place.

Expensive polls

Kenyans will, therefore, spend about Sh23 to print a single ballot paper. The cost is an increase from the Sh20 that taxpayers paid to print the ballot papers in the last election.

In 2017, Kenya set a benchmark for election costs in terms of cost per voter. The Kenyan election budget translated to Sh2,500 per voter for each of the 19.6 million voters.

When compared to other East African countries, Rwanda spent the least at about Sh100 per voter, Uganda was Sh400, and Tanzania was around Sh550 despite having a larger population and voter number than Kenya.

During a session engaging presidential candidates two weeks ago, one of the IEBC commissioners joked that Kenya’s ballot papers had more security features than the currencies of some of the continent’s countries.

Commissioner Abdi Guliye said he sometimes jokes with colleagues from other electoral agencies on the continent that the Kenyan election ballot paper has more security features than some currencies in Africa.

“We have eight security features on our ballot paper, some are visible by the eye others are invisible.” 

Such features include generic watermarks and capabilities that would make it impossible to photocopy – which is the same technology used in the printing of currency notes.

Former IEBC deputy CEO Wilson Shollei said the measures were necessary to deter people from reproducing ballot papers.

“We took printing abroad to make it difficult for politicians to manipulate the process. If it is done locally, there is the possibility they could influence local suppliers,” he said.

Yet this mistrust among the politicians has driven the costs high and made elections an expensive affair.

Tight security

Securing the election is an arduous affair for the IEBC. Other than the security features of the ballot paper, the IEBC has to hire two security officers for every polling centre.

There are more than 46,000 polling centres in this year’s election. The electoral agency also has to procure tamper-proof seals for the ballot boxes that each candidate or agent is supposed to use to seal the boxes. 

National Coordinator for the Elections Observation Group (ELOG) Mule Musau described it as a sad affair that Kenyans were paying higher costs because of a lack of confidence in each other. In this year’s election, some players have demonstrated a mistrust of electronic voting. There have been concerns about the backup means of voter identification.