Raila proposes ID-based voting to cut election costs, restore public trust in Kenya's electoral system
Odinga accused previous electoral commissions of deliberately complicating straightforward processes to create avenues for misappropriating public funds.
Former Prime Minister Raila Odinga has proposed that Kenyans should vote using their national identity cards, saying the country’s electoral system has become overly costly and inefficient.
Odinga argued that credible elections do not require complicated or expensive processes, and urged the newly appointed Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), led by Erastus Edung Ethekon, to focus on making elections more transparent and affordable.
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“First, the issue of the electoral commission, I think they need to address one issue. Why are Kenyan elections some of the most expensive elections in the world? Let’s just go there, because holding elections is not rocket science,” Odinga said during an interview with NTV on Sunday.
He accused past commissions of complicating simple electoral processes as a way of misappropriating public funds.
“The structure, the system, they created so many roadblocks basically just to eat money. Like this idea of digitising the electoral process, it’s a very simple process. It’s done in most societies, like the USA, and even in some simple countries like India. And the process is very cheap, but then procurement becomes very expensive because it’s a way of just eating money,” he said.
Clean voter register
The former Prime Minister called on the electoral commission to prioritise cleaning up the voter register.
“Clean it up and allow more people to register. People should actually use an ID as their register. I mean, there’s no reason why you should be having a different voter’s card when we have an ID. People should vote with their IDs, and just give people IDs in areas where people don’t have them. That’s why the voter register is skewed,” he said.
He also urged the commission to embrace artificial intelligence and other modern technologies to streamline tasks like the demarcation of electoral boundaries.
“Even the demarcation of boundaries should be a very simple exercise now with tools like AI. This is not something that should take a long time,” he said.
Odinga also proposed that Kenya should consider holding elections in stages, instead of conducting presidential, parliamentary, senatorial, and county elections all on the same day.
“In many countries, you don’t have parliamentary, senatorial, presidential, and county elections taking place at the same time. Stagger them so that you don’t have ballots with five things where you have to vote five times at once. You can stagger them and make it easier and cheaper,” Odinga said.
Rebuild public trust
He stressed that the primary duty of the new commission should be to rebuild public trust in the electoral process.
“This electoral commission has a responsibility to create confidence among the voters, because Kenyan voters are very sceptical because of past experiences. Once they’ve created confidence in the people that they can do a professional job that is unbiased and uninterfered with by the players, that’s the most important,” he said.
Responding to recent political claims that President William Ruto would secure a second term regardless of how people vote, Odinga condemned the remarks as reckless and dangerous.
“Those are the most unfortunate, irresponsible remarks that I’ve seen. There was a lady who spoke that way, and another Member of Parliament who spoke the same way, which is unfortunate,” Odinga said.
He warned that rigging allegations should not only concern presidential contests but extend down to local elections.
“We hope that the issue of rigging elections, not just at the presidential level but all the way up to the MCA level, will stop. Remember, this last time in Narok, we just saw the same things, even at the level of governors and other areas. We don’t want to see those kinds of things again,” he said.
Odinga stated that he has not yet decided whether he will run for president in 2027, saying it's too early to discuss the issue.
He emphasised that his current priority is strengthening the ODM party ahead of the next General Election, though he did not rule out a future presidential bid.
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