BY SAM ALFAN.
Battle lines have been drawn yet again pitting Jubilee Party (JP) and opposition NASA over what voter technology should be used to identify a voter.
Jubilee Party through its legal officer holds that both electronic and manual voter identification should be used whereas their competitors want only the electronic voter identification device otherwise called EVID.
Voter identification was a key agenda in talks that saw the ouster of former IEBC commissioners.
In their response in a suit where the opposition is seeking to have electronic systems exclusively used to identify voters and transmit results, Jubilee party says that failure of Biometric voter Registration systems and EVID systems should not be a basis of disenfranchising eligible voters.
JP Director of Legal Affairs Ms Mary Karen Soroboit, says that the opposition is trying to legislate its electoral agenda through the courts and should not be allowed to do so in view of the doctrine of separation of powers.
The court was told that the least it can do is to have provision for a back-up manual system in case the electronic system fails as has happened previously.
In the 2013 General Election, the systems failed because of faulty supply of power and the systems navigation among other shortcomings.
“The insistence on using electronic transmission as the only mode of transmission or identifying voters will thus be setting up the country on the reliance of an unreliable, insecure mode of transmission of results,” argues Jubilee
On the other hand the opposition argues that IEBC is time-barred to come up with regulations establishing complementary mechanism for the elections as required by law.
“Section 109 of the Elections Act (2011) requires that the mechanism and regulations to be put in place with the approval of Parliament at least 60 days before the General Election,”
“There is hardly time to design effective complementary system that can be verified by all concerned parties,” said Nasa through its legal representative Prof Tom Sihanya.
