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Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) yesterday held its primaries in Busia county in an exercise with  Woman Representative Florence Mutua locking horns with former Cabinet Minister Paul Otuoma for the governorship.

The party also held nominations for the Woman Representative and Members of the County Assembly in the day-long exercise that saw ODM deploy technology for identification and voting.

In a complete departure from the past, the voting was conducted electronically, where, once voters identified their names manually on a registration list, they headed to a tablet, where they keyed in their ID numbers and proceeded to vote. The tablet displays the names and photos of MCA aspirants from whom a voter is expected to select.

The position of Woman Representative attracted five aspirants: Catherine Omanyo, Lydia Nabwire, Pamela Riziki Odhiambo, Cynthia Mutere and Beatrice Nakhooli.

Aspirants for parliamentary seats in Nambale where Kevin Okwara was to square it out with Geoffrey Mulanya; Matayos where the race pitted incumbent Geoffrey Odanga against Humphrey Nakitare and Budalang’i where sitting legislator Raphael Wanjala was to face Chris Nakitare were summoned to Nairobi for consensus after the Elections Board cancelled the exercise there.

The party has issued direct tickets to some parliamentary aspirants Francis Oyula (Butula), Oku Kaunya (Teso North) and governor Sospeter Ojaamong (Teso South) after they lacked challengers.

Save for one incident at Mudoma primary school in Port Victoria, Funyula sub-county where Lameck Barasa was roughed up by some supporters of Otuoma who accused him and his team of allegedly dishing out money to entice the delegates to vote for Mutua, the exercise was largely peaceful. 

There were however claims of double voting and lack of inadequate in some parts of the county, particularly in Funyula Constituency 

Several voters and aspirants claimed that several voters were able to vote more than once in the exercise that was delayed to kick off for hours in several voting centres.

“It’s very unfair that a voter can vote more than once or his identity card can be used by another voter and the biometric gadget can’t detect that or the election officials cannot see anything wrong with that,” said an aspirant Agenga Nanguba, who is seeking to MCA for Funyula.

The claims were also witnessed in other various voting centres in the constituency.

Funyula MP Oundo Mudenyo also confirmed the claims and hoped that the issue would not affect the integrity of the exercise.

“We heard the claims that we had cases of double voting and we have reported the case to the relevant offices in most of the voting centres. I hope that this will not affect the integrity of the exercise,” Mudenyo said

Police also had to be called in to quell violence in some polling stations after several voters found their names missing from the voting register.

“In most of the voting centres, all has been fine and the turnout has been good apart from three or four centres where police had to come to ensure that everything went on smoothly by dealing with the cases well,” the MP said.

Mudenyo also defended the lack of voting booths to uphold voters’ secrecy in the exercise.

“I doubt the lack of voting booths will affect the outcome of the exercise. We should agree that this is a new exercise and is bound to challenges,” he said.

Otuoma who voted at the Bujwang’a voting centre in Funyula hailed the use of technology in the nominations and expressed hope that “nobody in the ODM secretariat would attempt to interfere with the outcome.”

“So far we are satisfied with the voting system and just hope that nobody would try to play some monkey business with the results. Let the people’s wish be respected,” Otuoma told journalists.

Mutula had been scheduled to cast her vote at Butula primary school but had not done so by 4 pm. 

Voting in several centres such as Lugulu, Tingolo, Kanjala, Bukhuma, Butula, and Mung’ambwa among others in Butula kicked off late due to the late arrival of the gadgets. In some instances, poor network hitches marred the exercise.