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Thursday, May 6, 2010

IIEC extends Kenya voter registration

 interim Independent Electoral Commission of Kenya chairman Ahmed Issack Hassan during a press conference May 5, 2010 where he announced the deadline for voter registration has been extended to Sunday. Photo/STEPHEN MUDIARI

Voter registration has been extended by four days giving a chance to millions of people who missed Wednesday’s deadline.

The Interim Independent Electoral Commission said the extension had been requested by organisations such as the Federation of Women Lawyers- Kenya chapter.
“All our staff have been asked to open the centres tomorrow (Thursday). Our programme is congested and we will not extend the deadline again,” said chairman Issack Hassan at a press conference on Wednesday night.
The registration will now end on May 9, 2010.
A meeting between Prime Minister Raila Odinga, Justice minister Mutula Kilonzo, Finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta and Attorney General Amos Wako agreed to give the process more funds.
The commission is on Thursday morning expected to send a team to Treasury for the release of the extra funds.
It costs Sh52 million a day to register voters countrywide and the total cost of the extension will be Sh208 million.
Mr Hassan said about 1.5 million extra voters are expected to enter the voters’ roll in the four extra days.
The chairman said the commission will now spend longer compiling the final register because of the time it takes scanning the information from the forms before transferring it to computers for compilation.
Queues at registration centres lengthened on Wednesday as the commission announced that it had surpassed its 10 million target.
By last Friday, 10,036,415 voters had enrolled, an increase of two million in a week.

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