Jennifer Shamalla, a nominated Member of Parliament, and Gladys Boss, an Uasin Gishu Woman Representative, have disagreed on the IEBC’s directive to reject a manual voter register in the August elections.
According to Boss, who supports the decision of the Independent and Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), the Azimio la Umoja One Kenya outfit should not reprimand the commission for going against the decision with only about 30 days until the elections.
The MP claims that the Raila Odinga-led camp had plenty of time to push for commission changes but waited until the last minute to express concerns, which she believes is due to panic.
“It’s in really bad taste that people are taking cases to court against IEBC. They had so much time..these regulations have been available to all of us all this time and if they wanted to go to court they could,” said Boss while in an interview with Citizen TV’s JKLive Show on Wednesday night.
“Prior to 2017, there were 48 cases around election regulations taken against IEBC. IEBC was in such a state of confusion that they didn’t answer some of them. It’s almost like terrorizing the electoral commission before it runs the election, you are going to leave them tattered and exhausted and not have time to do their work.”
Boss goes on to argue that IEBC chair Wafula Chebukati was justified in his decision because the printed register, which was initially used for counter-checking, can leak voters’ personal information.
She claims that because it uses identification information alongside other credentials such as location and contact information, it could be used for malicious purposes.
“What type of register are we talking about because seven days to the election, the register is put at the polling station, it is a printout, called the truncated register, hanged so that anybody can check if they are registered?” She posed.
“The reason why no one wants the one with ID numbers in the polling station is because your ID card number can be used to retrieve your data from the KIEMs kit.”
She added: “You can go to the IEBC and buy the register, but it does not have the identity cards and telephone numbers. For a reason. They are not put there for a reason; it forces the station to have to seek clearance that is not open to abuse. The one with IDS is open to abuse.”
Shamalla, on the other hand, maintained that the manual register is critical in confirming the legitimacy of the electoral process because it serves as a check against the data in the KIEMs kit.
She expressed concern that if the printout is not available during the process, it will allow voters to misrepresent themselves by using other people’s IDs.
“If anyone can enter, all the more reason you need the voter register with the ID, then we want to have the agents there to verify the people that come to the polling stations,” the MP explained.
“My worry is that the reason why the ID number is not at the polling station is that anyone can enter the KIEMs kit if they have the ID number… I can foresee a situation where anyone with anybody’s ID can come and vote because the number is not there.”
This comes after Odinga stated that the Azimio faction would boycott the election if the IEBC did not include a manual register, as required by the constitution.
