A section of Nyeri town constituency voters are urging the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to consider increasing the number of polling stations in the constituency as a way of curbing congestion during elections.
The residents told the IEBC that they had discovered that some polling stations-some neigbouring each other had unproportional number of registered voters occasioning some stations to have long queue on election day.
They now want the commission to recommend the new voters to consider registering in sparsely populated localities to reduce congestion and also save on the time taken by the voters to cast their vote.
“We have Ngangarithi Primary School which has 3,011 registered voters and right next to it there is Ngangarithi Secondary school which can be registered as a polling station. If the two-school registered as polling centres, it would reduce the congestion. It would also reduce electoral malpractice such as ballot stuffing because there is no congestion,” said Julia Wanjiku.
The residents have also asked the IEBC to consider reducing the voting time to 9 hours from the current 12 hours. They are also recommending the counting of votes which starts 6pm should start 4pm and continue to 6pm to eliminate the possibility of the process being marred by derelictions. Further, they are recommending that all electoral related activities including tallying be done during the day.
“The main issue is having congested polling stations which means the voting exercise stretches into the evening that is where electoral malpractices such as ballot stuffing comes in. The law by IEBC that counting of votes starts at 6pm should be changed so that voting ends before 4 pm. By 4 pm, counting should start so that by 6 pm, before the sun sets everything should have been counted because we know what happens under the cover of darkness. This is when voter turnout gets inflated and other malpractices take place,” said Washington Ndegea.
The residents gave their views during a public engagement on the mapping and review of registration centres. The constituency returning Officer Mauta Kaindio said that validation exercise will help the commission put its house in order ahead of the voluntary mass voter registration exercise that is slated to kick off on September 29.
Kaindio said that the IEBC is targeting to increase the number of voters in the constituency which stood at 87,000 in 2022 by between 30-35 per cent during the exercise. The commission is targeting the youth who recently acquired their national Identity cards as well as Kenyans who, despite attaining the age of 18, have never registered as voters. To attain this target, he said that the commission is partnering with the National Government Administration Officers to sensitize members of the public on the voter registration exercise.
“We are planning to have voter education and we are going to have barazas with the NGAOs, we are also going to visit social gatherings to sensitize people about the upcoming registration. Those who wish to register as first time voters must be Kenyan citizens and have a National Identity card or a valid passport and they must not have registered previously. We are targeting Gen Z because they acquired their IDs recently,” he said.
By Wangari Mwangi
