IEBC targets 6 million new voters in mass registration exercise

Independent Election and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) CEO Ezra Chiloba has said that the mass voter registration exercise slated to begin tomorrow (Monday) will target persons who have never registered as voters between 2012 and 2016 and persons who have recently acquired voting age and attained a national ID.

“Request for transfers as well as change of voters’ particulars shall be undertaken at IEBC constituency offices across the country. This will free up other clerks in the field to handle new registration of voters,” he said.

Speaking while releasing the voter registration schedule in Nairobi on Sunday, Mr Chiloba said that the commission targets 6 million new voters in the best-case scenario and 4 million voters in the worst-case scenario.

He noted that the registration would be done with the use of biometric voter registration (BVR) kits, which will capture biometric and alpha-numeric data of the applicants.

“The biometric enrolment will involve the capturing of the fingerprints,” he said.

The CEO revealed that the commission has employed criteria for distributing BVR kits to ensure that potential voters are not discouraged by long distances to register as voters.

He stated that the commission will have 24,614 voter registration centers in the country, with 7,793 BVR kits deployed countrywide based on county assembly ward size.

“The 2013 registration centers as revised will be used during the registration exercise,” he said.

“Each ward will have a minimum of three kits and a maximum of ten,” he noted.

He further outlined changes in some registration centers saying: “About 300 registration centers have been amended in terms of name and those in Mandera East and Lafey Constituencies due to realignment of constituency boundaries in accordance with a court of appeal decision”.

He noted that voter registration assistance would draw up kit movement schedules in consultation with stakeholders in the ward level.

He revealed that the commission has employed 2900 voter educators to publicise the kit movement schedules and over 1400 staff to register voters.