Kenyans went to the polls on Tuesday, August 9, 2022, to elect the President and Deputy President, Governors, Senators, Women Reps, MPs, and MCAs.
Despite the confusion and the suspension of Governor elections in the counties of Kakamega and Mombasa, most polling stations opened on time and Kenyans voted for their candidate.
Even as the voting went on, confusion arose across the country as to whether the manual register was supposed to be used. Many poll officials in many places across the country refused to use the manual register in the cases that many couldn’t be captured in the KIEMS Kits.
The officers, in places such as Bungoma County (Tongaren Constituency), claimed that they had received a court ruling that directed that the manual register was not to be used. It seems the IEBC failed in explaining to the officials on the ground what the ruling meant.
The truth is there was a court ruling against the use of the manual register but what many officials failed to read was that the court only suspended the “mandatory use” of the manual register. This means that KIEMS Kits were the primary identification of the voters.
However, in the event that all the KIEMS kits at a polling station failed to identify the voter, a manual register had to be used. But this was not the case in most polling stations across the country. Many elderly voters whose fingerprints had faded were turned away from voting because the KIEMS kits could not identify them.
As the counting of the votes continues, many Kenyans did not get an opportunity to exercise their democratic rights. With more than 22 million registered voters, only 12 million Kenyans got an opportunity to vote. Of course, there was a massive voter apathy but there are those who were genuinely denied an opportunity to vote.
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