NAIROBI, Kenya, Feb 21 – Rift Valley, Eastern and Central Kenya regions account for more than half of the total number of registered voters ahead of the August General Election.
The three regions added together have listed 10,544,141 voters out of the 19,743,716 registered across the eight regions by February this year.
The rest of the five regions put together have the remaining 9,199,575 registered voters.
Rift Valley region accounted for the highest number of registered voters recording 4,644, 812 voters.
As at last year, some 3,762,186 voters had been listed as voters in Rift Valley and an additional 882,626 voters were listed during the second phase of the Mass Voter Registration (MVR II) exercise that closed on February 19.
Eastern region had the second largest voting bloc accounting for 2,986,670 of voters following the additional 594,527 voters registered during MVR II.
The third region with the highest number of voters was Central Kenya which has 2,912,659 voters listed ahead of the August General Election.
Central Kenya was closely followed by Nyanza region which recorded 2,686,198 voters.
Nairobi came in fifth with 2,304,571 voters listed followed by Western Kenya which upon conclusion of MVR II had only a 40 per cent voter turnout which saw only 303,711 voters listed instead of the projected 742,041 voters.
Coast region had 1,733,722 voters listed before the general elections with North Eastern listing 486,880 voters yet with a good voter turnout of 98.9 per cent during MVR II.
Against its target of registering six million voters during the last phase of MVR II, the electoral commission achieved 61.8 per cent (3,782,089) of its target.
It also means that it will not meet its target of registering 22 million voters ahead of the August General Election after listing only 19,743,716 voters with 167 days to go before the elections.
IEBC was however expecting to register more voters with expected voter listing of Kenyans living in the Diaspora and those in prisons after dates of their registration were affected by extension of MVR II from February 14 to February 19.
Continuous voter registration at the constituency level will also continue until March 7.
Upon completion of the voter registration, by law the commission is tasked to make public the voters’ register and allow voters to verify their registration details.