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An audit firm tasked with cleaning the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) register has identified 246,465 dead voters in the roll, raising questions about the integrity of the vital document that will determine whether the coming polls are credible or not.

There are also more than 480,000 voters who have been registered more than once further soiling its credibility.

The shocking revelation came as leading presidential candidates in the coming polls have demanded the IEBC to address issues they have raised on the authenticity of the voters’ roll.

Audit report

The preliminary findings by KPMG were handed to IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati last evening.

Chebukati confirmed receipt of the audit report and will take another two weeks to implement the recommendations before making the register public.

“The commission has received a preliminary audit report with useful information including a total 246,465 deceased voters, 481,711 duplicate records, these are people sharing more than one ID, 226,143 registered with IDs that don’t validly belong to them, 164,269 registered voters with voter records which are not recognised,” said Chebukati.

The chairman said they had postponed the public scrutiny of the register to give themselves time to go through it and clean it before interested parties can scrutinise it.

The electoral agency expects to receive the final report from KPMG on June 16.

“These issues must be addressed prior to certification and publication of the register. Previously the Commission had announced that it will certify and publish the register of voters on or before June 9.” he said.

He added: “Due to implementation of these preliminary audit findings on the register, the commission has decided to address the findings prior to certifying the register for publication on or before June 20.”

Last week, Deputy President William Ruto said they were concerned that details of one million voters from their strongholds could have been deleted from the register.

He linked the development to an alleged plan to interfere with the polls in favour of their opponents.

“We are ready to work with IEBC and friends to make sure we deliver credible elections. We expect that everybody concerned including the European Union will get as much information as possible from IEBC and public officials, on what this is all about and how close to a million votes disappear from the register and many of those names are people from what we consider our stronghold,” said the DP.

 Yesterday, KPMG’s Head of Advisory Gerald Kasimu said they had made a range of recommendations, some to be implemented immediately and other requiring time and investigations.

 “There are still quite a number of recommendations that must be dealt with before the final register can be gazetteed and submitted. A number of these recommendations can be addressed quickly, there are some that require investigations before they can be fully rectified,” said Kasimu.

He added they had been made aware of the concerns raised by the DP and would look into them before submission of the final roll of voters in two weeks.

 “There are a number of claims made in regards to the verification that calls for updates to the register. You may have witnessed complaints about transfers where there are certain voters that have raised concern about being transferred from areas they had registered to areas they did not wish to vote from,” he said.

“We have identified these issues of concern…we expect that by the time we issue our final report we can confirm to the commission that we are comfortable with the implementation of the recommendations that we have issued,” he said.