On Wednesday, July 6, Azimio la Umoja-One Kenya coalition party presidential candidate Raila Odinga said there will be no elections unless the manual register is used.
Raila, who is seeking the presidency for the fifth time, maintained that the electoral body must retain a manual register, as backup, should the electronic one fail due to poor network, mainly in rural areas.
He also insisted that having both the manual and electronic register will guard against any attempts to rig the election.
The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) said it will deploy 60,000 Kenya Integrated Election Management System (KIEMS) kits to identify and verify the over 22 million voters.
However, as the August 9, General Election fast approaches, a tweet in which the 2022 presidential front runner Raila Odinga was rooting for an electronic vote register has emerged.
In the tweet that Raila posted in the run-up to the dramatic 2017 General Election, the then National Super Alliance (NASA) presidential candidate said that use of electronic identification of voters had been used in many countries without reverting to manual.
“Many countries have used biometric registration, electronic identification, and electronic transmission successfully without reverting to the manual,
“Biometric registration and electronic identification do not require mobile network coverage to function,” Raila said.
Then, Raila believed there was no need for IEBC to use a manual register as a backup to the electronic register in ensuring only registered voters participate in the poll.
It is obviously surprising for Raila to now make an about-turn and demand that IEBC uses a manual register alongside an electronic register.
But IEBC said it will only use manual in the event the digital register fails.
“IEBC is abiding by a court of appeal ruling done in 2017 that the primary register to be used is the digital register and that in the event of technology failure the manual register is used and the manual register is prepared from the digital one,” IEBC CEO Marjan Marjan said.
