Low turnout in first week of voter registration

 The country witnessed a sluggish start of voter registration. This has been revealed by IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati in weekly press release shared by the Commission.

Mr Chebukati says the low turnout of citizens to be registered as voters was attributed to general voter apathy, lack of National Identity Cards for the youths who had applied for the crucial documents and did not receive them and those who had the IDs but lost them.

Further, the chairperson says that Kenyans are known to be last minuters and should desist from that habit of waiting for the last days and queuing for hours for service.

“The Commission has reported a low turnout in the first week with only 202,518 (13.5%) registration out of the National week target of 1,500,000”, reads an update from IEBC in part.

Kitui County is among the bottom ten counties with the lowest percentage of registered voters. According to IEBC, the county had 154,341 unregistered voters among whom only 2,324 (2%) new voters were registered in the first week of registration that will take 30 days to carry out.

President Uhuru Kenyatta’s home county of Kiambu is the least performing in terms of coming out and being registered as voters. It has similar number of registered voters as Kitui but has a higher number of unregistered voters at 385,367.

Most of highly registered new voters come from Deputy President William Ruto’s political backyards. Elgeyo Marakwet, West Pokot, Nandi and Baringo counties feature among the top ten newly registered voters. However, they have a smaller number of population than the counties with low uptake of new voter registration.

STORY By MUSYOKA NGUI, EDITED By BONIFACE MWANIKI