By FRED OLUOCH

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Despite the Kenyan opposition oozing with confidence that they have 10 million voters on their side in the August 8 election, they are still worried over a number of issues.

One concern is that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission has failed to fulfil certain duties within the timelines provided for in the law.

John Onyando, a Nasa communications official, says that the IEBC is yet to publish the audited register of voters despite the law requiring that the register be published 30 days before the election.

The Commission says it will do so on August 1.

Gladwel Otieno, the executive director of the Centre for Open Governance went to court on July 18 to compel the IEBC to publish the registers per polling station to allow public scrutiny.

The second concern for Nasa, according to Mr Onyando are the 1.5 million dead voters still in the register, the 400,000 cases of double registration and those who share national identification numbers.

The IEBC chairman, Wafula Chebukati, has clarified that the Kenya Integrated Elections Management System will provide foolproof authentication on election day and that there is no way anyone could use names of anyone that will not be physically present to vote.

Under the Election Laws (Amendment) Act, 2016, there will be only 700 voters per stream out of the total 40,883 polling stations in the country. Some of the polling stations will have more streams than others depending on the population.

The third concern is the prospect of equipment failing, forcing the IEBC to resort to a manual system.

Mr Onyando says Nasa is concerned that the biometric voter identification kits will not have been tested until three days to the election.

“We would have preferred that the kits be tested in their real environment so that challenges such as performance and power retention are identified on time,” said Mr Onyando.

In 2013, some voter identification kits failed either because they had not been charged or the handlers had not been sufficiently trained. This time, the IEBC has acquired special tablets to verify the particulars of each voter, with each tablet locked to a particular polling station.

Nasa is also concerned about some the activities of the Jubilee government in the run-up to the elections. The Nasa presidential candidate, Raila Odinga, has complained that the government has released some police and military officers to be deployed as poll officials in as-yet-unspecified areas.

Both Jubilee and the government deny this.

There is concern that that the government is forcing civil servants, Cabinet Secretaries and parastatal heads to campaign for Jubilee contrary to the law.

Nasa alleges that the government has classified most of the opposition strongholds as hotspots that will require heavy presence of security agents in an effort to intimidate their supporters not to come and vote.