Kenyans will be voting for their next leaders a week from today.
The exercise, which is conducted after every five years, will see more than 22 million registered voters pick their reps from different regions in the country.
However, are Kenyans aware of the people who they will be voting for? This is particularly interesting because this time around, there are more contestants than the state has seen before, especially for County Assembly members.
These people might not be known to some voters, especially those who will be traveling to vote from upcountry.
Nonetheless, there is a tool that can help voters know who is vying from their registration centres. Named MyCandidate Kenya, the tool is developed by Open Cities Lab, in collaboration with media publication Africa Uncensored and Odipodev.
It has been designed in a way that can recognize a ward, constituency, county name, and contestants.
For instance, once opened, you can type something like ‘Kaloleni Nairobi.’
The tool will then output the results of the areas, including address details, people who will be vying for the presidency, members of parliament, senators, governors, women reps, and MCAs.
The tool, which can be accessed HERE, is well designed, works quickly, and pulls all the necessary details that a voter may require.
A lot of features and functions of the elections have since been digitized. For example, IEBC stated that it will not be providing manual voter registers at polling stations, but revised the information. Now, the registers are currently being printed but will be used as a backup in case the digital version fails.
In 2017, IEBC managed the ICT/KIEMS (Kenya Integrated Election Management System) system. The system had been put in place by Oberthur Technologies (OT) and Safran Identity & Security (Morpho) which have extensive knowledge about biometrics, authentication, digital security as well as video and data analytics.
In 2022, Smartmatic International B.V. took over the same roles. The company creates and offers electronic voting technology and services that have been designed to make elections ‘more auditable and transparent.’
