An election official marks a voter's finger with indelible ink after casting their ballot in a past election./FILE
Poll observer Elog has requested access to the register of voters to verify its accuracy ahead of the 2027 general election, citing credibility concerns with the current roll.
Elog has been involved in observing and monitoring electoral processes since 2010.
The Election Observation Group says the current register is rife with anomalies, including duplicate and dead voters, a reality it says became apparent after two occasions it audited the directory in 2012 and 2017.
"In both the above instances, the Elog audits found anomalies and errors. For instance, in 2012, we found the register to have errors on 143,530 records, while in 2017, the audit revealed 169,646 duplicate records. It is important to indicate that all these errors were found on the register after the elections had been conducted," chairperson Victor Nyongesa said in a statement on Wednesday.
He said anomalies regarding dead voters was further established when IEBC contracted KPMG to audit the register ahead of the 2017 elections.
"Indeed, KPMG, the professional audit firm that was contracted by IEBC in 2017, expressed concerns that there could have been as many as 1,037,260 deceased persons in the same register."
Elog alleged that its audit of dead voters in the 2017 register was frustrated by the lack of an official list of dead voters from the Registrar of Births and Deaths.
The observer group said while part of the problem with dead voters can and has been addressed by the use of KIEMS kits through bio-metric registration and identification of voters, there were cases that necessitated the use of manual identification methods.
"Given the import of the above and the fact that ELOG was not able to conduct another independent audit of the 2022 elections...Elog requests access to the Register of Voters for purposes of undertaking an independent audit and verification," Nyongesa said.
He said concerns over the integrity of the register of voters are valid and necessitate the need to be addressed.
Nyongesa said the national conversation sparked by Macharia is necessary for informing the on-going electoral reforms in anticipation of the reconstitution of the IEBC, which is expected to be finalised midway through this year.
"We, in agreement with one of the proposals given through the NADCO report, say that once the new commission is constituted, it must within the shortest time possible assess the veracity of the current register with a view to either undertaking a thorough clean-up exercise or a total overhaul of the same by creating a new register in time for 2027," Nyongesa said.
He said the process should invite robust public participation as well as other stakeholder engagements.
