Do you need 6 minutes to mark “X” on a ballot paper?

By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

10 February 2008

T. J. Okoth writes in from Mombasa regarding the votes reported in Juja constituency. He says, “A controversy has been raging in the Daily Nation's ‘Watchman’ as to the possibility of 119,000 voters in a constituency of 231 polling stations voting within a period of 11 hours. You are quite an authority in such things and I am eager to read your answer in the coming edition of the Sunday Nation”.

The controversy is that some people have argued that it is impossible for 119,000 votes to be cast in 231 stations in 11 hours. According to the calculations, the voting rate (per minute) would be unreasonably high.

Well, T. J., before attempting to make sense out of this controversy, I must admit that I grew up in Thika – the main urban centre in Juja constituency – and I have close relatives and friends living there. Thus I know a little more about the area than the average Kenya – though this can also be seen as a valid reason to be biased!

But even before talking about the voter turn out, the first question that I saw casting doubts on the total number of registered voters (over 160,000) in the constituency. However when we bear in mind that Juja stretches from Githurai (in Nairobi!) to the Chania River and then down to Kilimambogo (bordering Machakos), that figure is no longer too high.

Furthermore, this is probably the only constituency in the country that covers two municipalities (Thika and Ruiru) and several town centres (towns, not markets!). Thus in my (biased) opinion, the 160,000 is too little.

Now, regarding the 119,000 voters who turned up; the doubters have worked out that, on average, 515 people voted per polling station, which is about 47 per hour. This further works down to every person taking one minute and 15 seconds to cast their vote.

Clearly, such a voting speed is too high, especially when we consider that there were three ballots to be marked. However, the above calculation makes one major invalid assumption – that there was only one queue (stream) in every polling station.

The truth is that in this highly urbanised constituency, most polling stations had more than 5 streams. In fact, the one at the Thika municipal stadium had 11 separate queues! When we factor this into the calculation, it turns out that there were over 1,600 lines (using an average of 7 lines per station).

Even if we knock down that number to 1,000 streams, it turns out that only about 119 people voted on each queue throughout the day. That is, approximately 10 voters every hour, or 6 minutes spent by each voter.

Again, in my (biased) opinion, the reported 119,000 voter turn out was actually too small. It makes me wonder why anyone would need 6 minutes to draw a small “X” on three pieces of paper!