The Elections Observers Group (ELOG) wants the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to audit and clean up the voter register ahead of 2027. 

This came as ELOG recommended that once the new commissioners are in place, they should undertake a thorough clean-up exercise of the voters register or create a new register in time for the 2027 General Elections. 

ELOG Chairman Victor Nyongesa said that the integrity of the Register of Voters must be addressed ahead of the polls, adding that ELOG has conducted a voter list assessment exercise in the past where they identified errors, duplicates and other statistical anomalies. 

“We request access to the Register of Voters for purposes of undertaking an independent audit and verification,” said Nyongesa. 

According to Nyongesa, the lobby group used a people-to-list approach as well as computer assessment tests of the data to identify errors, duplicates and other statistical anomalies. 

“In both the above instances, ELOG audits found anomalies and errors. The current concerns over the integrity of the Register of Voters are valid and therefore there is a need to address the issue,” charged Nyongesa. 

ELOG further contends that while there is a due process of registering, compiling, updating, auditing, cleaning and certification of the voters register, there have been persistent errors and anomalies. 

In a statement sent to newsrooms yesterday, Nyongesa said that the issue of updating the voter register, especially with regard to the removal of deceased voters, has been problematic. 

In 2017, the electoral agency contracted an audit firm, which expressed concerns that there could have been as many as 1,037,260 deceased persons in voters register. 

While releasing the preliminary findings in June 2022, KPMG’s Head of Advisory Gerald Kasimu said they had made a range of recommendations, some to be implemented immediately and others requiring time and investigations. 

Before the August 2022 polls, calls were made to the IEBC by relevant stakeholders for them to publish the list of the dead voters, those of double and multiple registrations and those of other inconsistencies for Kenyans to verify on their own. 

Nyongesa argues that while part of the problem with dead voters can and has been addressed by the use of the Kenya Integrated Elections Management System (KIEMS) kits through bio-metric registration and identification of voters, they observed cases that necessitated the use of manual identification methods.