And while the municipality slates have their machineries well oiled, the Elections and Boundaries Department has also been hard at work. They've spent the last few months ensuring that everything goes smoothly on March 6th, just as it went on Nomination Day - aside from one minor hiccup. The Chief Elections Officer told us more via Zoom.
Josephine Tamai, Chief Elections Officer
"As a department we have been preparing for some time now since there is a set date for municipal elections and so we've conducted meetings with the political parties, the candidates, the movements, also training of our public officers who are the persons who actually conduct elections on election day, the police officers as well and so it's a process that has been ongoing and we feel as if though that we're well prepared for this."
"And we are basically awaiting for six of March. So we all know that nomination day was last week Wednesday, and so we had a total of 163 persons who got nominated and who will be contesting the municipal elections on March 6."
"When it comes to persons who can vote, The law states that persons who are eligible to vote for this municipal election are the names of the persons who on the register as of nomination date. And so we sent out notices to inform the public that the cutoff date for persons wishing to vote in this Municipal Election would have been the 10th of January 2024."
"And that was basically the cut off date and so I want to advise persons that those who have have reregistered since the 2nd of July 2018, up until the 10th of January 2024. Those persons who were approved to be on that list."
"Those are the persons were eligible to vote. Basically, the feedback I got from the returning officers and election clerks, things basically went smoothly, we know we had maybe one incident of persons wanted to get nominated who were not registered electors and so like I said the person basically didn't re-register and he was not aware and not able to get nominated on that day."
"So like i said there was one case, but basically things went smoothly across the country."
