Voting kicked off peacefully in Malava Constituency by-election in Kakamega County as polling stations opened their doors from 6am across the constituency.
Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) officials in a number of polling stations confirmed that the Kenya Integrated Management Electronic System (KIMS) kits were working well and that they had not encountered any challenges so far.
A spot check conducted by Kenya News Agency established that there was a fairly high turnout in the early morning hours but the number of voters started dwindling as from 10am, with Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) officials expecting the numbers to surge in the late afternoon.
At Kakoyi Primary school polling station, Presiding Officer Julie Otieno confirmed that the biometric voter identification system was working well.
“We have been able to identify a majority of the registered voters so far except four voters, who could not be recognized by their thumb. In such a case we opt to use their identification cards or their facials as long as their names are in the register,” She added.
“We are doing well and so far 100 out of 694 registered voters had cast their vote by 8.30am and we are hoping the numbers to increase in the afternoon and evening before close of the voting exercise at 5pm,” she said.
At Tande Primary school, Presiding Officer Maureen Odhiambo said by 9am, 112 out of 654 registered voters had cast their vote and they expected the numbers to increase in the afternoon.
“We are on course, we got many of the voters coming in very early as from 6am and we expect the numbers to go up before close of business”, she added.
At Matsakha polling station, Presiding Officer at one of the streams Duncan Soita said by 9.55 am, 107 out of 546 voters had voted and that they had not encountered any challenge so far.
“In few cases where the registered voter is not easily identified by the KIEMS kit, we use the supervisory mode of physical voters register with concurrence of the various party agents and observers here,” he added.
The IEBC officials said they had encountered some people who turned up to vote only to discover that they are registered in Nairobi.
“In such cases, we ask them to go and change their polling stations during the ongoing voter registration,”, said Kelvin Chisindani, the Presiding Officer at one of the streams at Namanja primary school.
“So far at this stream at Namanja primary school, we have 149 people who have cast their votes out of 594 registered voters
While today’s voting has largely been peaceful, with uniformed police officers keeping vigil, several people got injured last night during a clash between two rival groups at a local hotel in the neighboring Lugari constituency.
Property of unknown value and a motor vehicle were destroyed during the clash, with one of the group members who was caught beaten senseless.
According to Malava Constituency Returning Officer Salim Abdalla, the constituency has 94,00 registered voters, 198 polling stations with nine candidates having been cleared by IEBC to vie for the seat.
However, Edgar Busiega of Democracy for the Citizen Party (DCP) and Joab Manyasi of Democratic Alliance Party (DNA) withdrew from the race at the eleventh hour to support Seth Panyako of DAP-K and David Ndakwa of United Democratic Alliance (UDA) respectively.
However, their names are appearing on the printed ballot papers due to their late withdrawal
The Returning Officer has said so far no major incident had been reported and that voting was going on well by midday.
by George Kaiga
