More than one month after the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) kicked off the continuous voter registration exercise on September 29, 2025, only 90,020 people have registered.
This should trigger alarm bells in government, and more so in IEBC, which is charged with delivering credible elections. When IEBC rolled out the exercise in readiness for the 2027 General Election, it targeted to register an additional 6 million voters, most of them in the Gen Z age bracket.
If these registration numbers remain constant, it will take IEBC more than five years to realise its target, yet the country does not have the luxury of time. IEBC must be ready for the next elections in less than two years and must aspire to do better than previous commissions.
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The continuous registration exercise limits those wishing to register as voters must do so only in constituency offices. This fails to take into account that travelling long distances to register involves a financial cost that many people are unable to meet. Notably, even the smallest constituency is expansive and expecting all those who would like to register as voters to visit these offices is wishful thinking.
Those targeted in the ongoing exercise are mostly youths who are just out of school. Majority of them are jobless and can not raise money to travel to the constituency offices to register as voters. But even those with money will find it unnecessary to spend Sh100 or several hundred shillings and waste time travelling in order to register as a voter as they have other pressing priorities to address.
If it is serious about registering a big number of Kenyans, IEBC must take registration centres closer to the people. It is the duty of the government to allocate IEBC adequate funds so that it can conduct this important exercise.
Everything must be done to ensure that eligible Kenyans are not disenfranchised because of IEBC’s failure to facilitate their registration. Time is not on our side. IEBC should consider launching a mass registration exercise.
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By Editorial