Raila calls for scrapping the voter’s card
Raila Odinga, has proposed a barrage of electoral reforms, including scrapping the voter's card.
The Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party leader, Raila Odinga, has proposed a barrage of electoral reforms, including scrapping the voter’s card.
Speaking on Sunday during an interview with NTV, his first since signing the 10-point agenda with President William Ruto in February, Odinga said that this step would not only lighten the financial load but also ease the electoral process.
According to the veteran politician, a national identity is the only requirement needed to vote, and the voter’s card is just an unnecessary expense.
He further backed the idea of digitising the voter registration process, claiming that even though the process was cheap, its procurement was used as just another channel to funnel funds for politicians.
Despite this, the ODM leader claimed that with developing technology, digitising the process would be made even easier by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and save Kenya money.
“We need to first deal with the voter register. Clean it up and allow people to register. People should actually use an ID as their register,” he stated.
“There is no reason why you should be having a voter’s card and [you] have an ID. People should vote with their IDs. Just give people IDs because there are places where people don’t have IDs, and that is why the voter register is skewed.”
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Odinga also proposed the staggering of the elections, so that not all the elections are conducted on the same day.
According to him, having people vote on the different categories on different days would not only ease the process for voters but also cheapen the process.
As for the new commission, he insisted that its core responsibility was to prove to Kenyans that it was not compromised and could run a free and fair election.
“This electoral commission has a responsibility, first to create confidence for the voters that they can do a professional job that is unbiased and uninfluenced by the players,” he said.
This is despite recent claims by one of President Ruto’s allies that they were willing to rig him in if he failed to win the election fairly, to ensure he was not the first Kenyan President to serve one term.
However, Raila termed the remarks as unfortunate but claimed it was just a reflection of past rigging practices that had been experienced in the country.
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