Use both electronic and manual voter registers, senator urges IEBC
Nominated Senator Beth Mugo wants the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission to allow the use of the manual voter register, saying the sole application of the electronic one would disadvantage voters with fingerprint defects.
She said she could be among those denied a chance to vote since she has lost sensitivity to her fingerprints.
“Forcing me to apply the same will be denying me my constitutional right. There are many of us who suffer from this defect,” Mugo told a press conference at Parliament Buildings yesterday.
She added that the majority of elderly Kenyans, especially in rural areas, suffer from this problem mainly due to hard work on farms.
Nandi Senator Samson Cheralgei also waded into the matter and urged the electoral body to allow the application of both systems.
The electoral body has maintained that it will not allow manual voting in the August 9 election, adding that it has aligned itself to the Supreme Court’s ruling on the 2017 presidential election results.
The commission has upheld that biometric verification will be the primary mode of identifying voters, backed by a complementary alpha-numeric search in the presence of agents.
