How Jubilee Party smart card will work

The Jubilee Party smart card, that will be launched on Friday by President Uhuru Kenyatta and DP William Ruto, is aimed at ensuring free and fair nominations.

The card will ensure only registered voters who are genuine members of the party participate in the nominations in May.

It will also make sure no one votes twice in the nominations through a system that is integrated with the voter register database.

The unique smart membership card contains a member’s name, identity number, mobile phone number and voting details such as the polling station.

Aspirants have been encouraged to buy the cards en-mass for their supporters, at Sh20 a piece, but this is just the first step in becoming a Jubilee Party member.

Read: Jubilee Party plans to net Sh200 million from smartcards sold at Sh20 each

A member will have to send a text message with the word 'accept" to the short code 30553, for free, to activate the smart card in the database at the headquarters in Nairobi.

Aspirants who buy cards for their supporters will have to ensure this process is completed as they will not access more cards from the headquarters.

They will then be prompted to complete registration by sending their name, identity number and the plastic smart card number.

The card is connected to the database of the Registrar of Political Parties and that of the IEBC, so that not only members not registered in other political parties are voters

If you are a member of another party and try to register through the card system, it will prompt you to respond to questions like ‘Sorry, you are a member of another political party, do you wish to resign and register as a JP member?'

At the nominations, party members will be required to produce the cards before casting their votes.

The card will be scanned for verification and then authenticated through a smart phone by the polling agent for one to be allowed to vote.

The authentication will be done by a Jubilee application that has been developed for the purpose, that will be downloaded by polling officials using smart phones.

Once the card has been used, it becomes inactive and cannot be used used for voting in a particular polling station.

An attempt for second verification and authentication will be flagged from the database at the party's headquarters.

Source