IEBC officials during a past voter registration exercise. [Photo/ the-star.co.ke]
There are concerns in Malindi over the probable high number of people who could miss voting in August because they don’t exist in the IEBC voters’ register.
On Thursday, Malindi sub county IEBC head Masha Sudi said the ongoing voter verification exercise had revealed that details of over 600 residents who registered to vote during the August poll had not been captured in the IEBC database.He said Malindi town and Shela wards were the most affected.“These people registered to vote but they don’t exist anywhere in the IEBC database,” Sudi said.He said there was a likelihood that particulars of more people could be missing in the database taking into account the low number of people who have turned up to verify their voter registration status.“There are chances more people could have been erroneously omitted in the IEBC register. We singled out the more than 600 cases after only a few people came to verify their status,” he said.He said in some wards in the constituency, less than 10 per cent of the total registered voters had verified their status during the month long period given by the IEBC to conduct the verification exercise.Overall, he said, out of the 28,229 registered voters in the Malindi constituency, only 7,288 had verified their status by the end of Wednesday April 7.He called on residents to turn up on Friday to verify their voters’ status so as not to be locked out during the August 8 election.According to the IEBC, registered voters with irregular particulars in the voters register will be required to fill a form issued at the ward level.The form will be forwarded to the IEBC headquarters and the errors rectified before the election.