Police lobbed tear gas at the voters to disperse them after a section of voters threatened to storm one of the polling stations. Calm was later restored/TIMOTHY OLOBULU
NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug 8 – A man with diabetes was unable cast his vote after the KIEMS system failed to read his fingerprints nine hours after camping at a polling station.
Joseph Kimani, a voter at the Kariokor Social Hall polling station said he had not carried his insulin injection hoping to have voted by noon and return to his home in Murang’a.
“I came here at 2am hoping to cast my vote and go back home. However, after several attempts of trying to identify my finger prints, IEBC officials told me to wait for an alternative identification method.”
The polling station was marred with chaos after delays of opening the polls pushed the voters to protest.
Police lobbed tear gas at the voters to disperse them after a section of voters threatened to storm one of the polling stations. Calm was later restored.
The deputy presiding officer told Capital FM News that some of the voting materials were delivered late which could be the reason Kimani’s identification took longer than expected.
This year’s General Election have witnessed its fair share of surprises. For instance, a woman in North Pokot gave birth at a polling station where she was waiting to cast her vote. In a separate incident, a voter collapsed and died after voting at Lela Primary School polling station in Nyando and his body taken to local mortuary.
It has also witnessed people of all walks of life making an effort to show up and vote.
There are over 40,000 polling stations spread across the country with IEBC saying it has more than 19 million registered voters.
By press time, 40 per cent of voters identified on KIEMS had voted.
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