Voter system should be carefully vetted - Kivuitu

Voter system should be carefully vetted

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By SAMUEL M. KIVUITU
Posted  Sunday, August 19  2012 at  18:54

There has been public debate on the kind of voters register Kenya should use during the forthcoming General Election, with the electronic one winning the highest support.

It would be dishonest to fail to inform Kenyans that their voters register was computerised in 1997, through the assistance of the United Nations Development Programme.

The now defunct Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) regularly revised that register, electronically, before any General Election until 2002, when the law allowed continuous voter registration.

Therefore, there has been no manual voter registration since 1997. However, the law did not nullify previous manual registers. Until the law did so, voters in those registers continued to enjoy the right to vote.

Voters will recall that they were required to produce their ID cards to be registered or make any changes to their details in the register.

That is because the ID card is the only identification mark for voters and the only way for officials to identify those seeking to be registered. It also follows that unless the ID number is known, the registration officials cannot determine if the person is already in the register.

The ECK had no way of determining if a voter was dead. The Registrar of Persons did not have that information because he did not recall the IDs of dead people and the law did not oblige the official to do that.

The end result was that the names of dead voters remained in the register. That explains why a large number of dead voters remained in the roll.

Through cooperation between the registrar and the ECK between 2000 and 2007, the ID numbers of those who had died during that period were made available and the commission ensured that the names were removed from the register. But the names of those who died between 1997 and 2000 remained.

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The Kriegler Commission used information from the ECK to establish the number of dead voters in the register. I expressed my view then that it was possible that some unscrupulous people used the ID cards of dead people to vote in some areas, of course with the connivance of election officials who had their own hidden agenda.

The ECK said the problem would be eliminated only when a fresh and comprehensive national registration of voters is carried out. That remains my view.

The biometric voter registration would tackle this task adequately because it captures even voter’s photograph. Countries that do not have national ID cards have chosen this system.

Since it also stores the voter’s fingerprints, problems such as dead voters and multiple voting will be eliminated.

However, what this system will not resolve is the fraudulent nature of some politicians and voters. And the resolution of this problem is pivotal to the success of any improvements on the systems we adopt.

All technologies have weakness that the wicked, who are prepared to do everything possible to achieve their selfish designs, can manipulate them.

Therefore, even as we agree on the best technology to manage our voters register, we need to re-examine our morals, principles, and values.

Before the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission rushes to use the system, it should ensure that voters understand how it works.

Mr Kivuitu is a former chairman of the defunct Electoral Commission of Kenya and an advocate of the High Court