Giving Fresh Credibility to Kenya’s Electoral System

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Bio-metric voter registration
Date Published: 
February 8, 2013
A young man gets his fingerprints recorded at an IEBC voter registration site
"It’s a quick and easy process that took me a few minutes. I can now exercise my right to vote in the election process scheduled on the March 4, 2013 General Election in Kenya."
Jef Karang'ae, first time voter

The biometric voter registration drive conducted in Kenya by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), was launched on the 19th of November 2012. The voter registration exercise ran for 30 days (including weekends and public holidays).

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission registered 14.3 million voters using the biometric voter registration technology system. Biometric data captured during the registration is  is being  linked with electronic voter identifiers (electronic poll books)  while text data is being used  for real time electronic result transmission and display systems. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) invested over $ 6 million USD in the two systems, through United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES). According to analyses, two of the most significant factors attributed to the failure of the 2007 election were the inability of the Electoral Commission of Kenya to compile a credible voter register, and the lack of an efficient results reporting system.

USAID has partnered with Civil Society Organizations  to ensure the effective use of the biometric voter registration technology in the upcoming 2013 presidential elections, to prevent fraud and reduce the likelihood of violence. Technical assistance and support to the civil society organizations include development of a system to be used in auditing the voter registration exercise, production of digital electoral constituency maps and support to a statistically based parallel vote tabulation exercise to be implemented by Election Observation Group.  USAID through IFES and UNDP provided technical assistance to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission in the roll-out of nationwide biometric voter registration exercise.

by Jef Karang'ae