E-Voting, is it all?

At the end of last week we had a successful conference. The 12th annual ICT conference Strathmore. among the speakers invited w

as Mr Ahmed Isaak who talked about how they went about to come up with a reliable voting system guided by integrity. The IIEC was formed in 20

08 after the former Electoral Commission of Kenya flawed badly in 20

07.

"When people vote and go home, they think they have decided but actually it is the people who count the vote who decides"

The new IIEC has implemented IT alot more than just for appreciation. To start with they've begun on electronic voter registration to replace the manual (ORM) way of doing the same. He said this is how voters for 2012 will be registered. The elections are also monitored closely with a

double updating of vote counts on line. The will be a central collection of vote counts of different regions.

So far so good, the vote has not been interfered with. However for me that is half the problem. The peoples of Kenya are yet to be taught how to vote and vote wisely. Are we going to ride on a system that is water-tight but still have our vote influenced by tribe, money, region-ism etc? This is the bigger half of the problem we have. There's an mp who was voted in passionately by the people of his constituency after literally splashing money in all the neighbourhoods and using it to satisfy the vain needs of the voters like getting drunk. Thanks to the IIEC though, the integrity of the vote count was unquestionable. Looking at that scenario in whatever angle, don't you think the IIEC ought to do thorough civic education (i don't know how) or is it that we just need prayers?

Tuwafanyenini hawa?