The electoral body, IEBC, is concerned that majority of the youth will not vote in the coming general elections if the government does not speed up the processing of identity cards (IDs), which the law require that citizens must have to register as a voters in Kenya. To ensure that the voter registration process, which is due later in the year, is not frustrated by lack of IDs, the Commission has stepped up engagements and consultations with the Ministry of State for Immigration and Registration of Persons. IEBC’s plan and strategy is to increase the number of voters from the current 12.4 million to possibly 20 million voters.

A team of Commissioners and senior managers, led by the IEBC Chairman Issack Hassan have called on the Minister for Immigration Hon. Otieno Kajwang’ to get an update on what the government is doing to speed up the issuance of IDs and to seek ways of collaborating on issues such as the fraud of "dead voters", the phasing out of 2nd Generation ID cards and the registration of Kenyans in the Diaspora.

Mr. Kajwang’ revealed that the backlog of unprocessed cards was cleared by 16th December 2011. An intensive mobile ID registration programme has also been in place since August 2011, though "lack of sufficient funding stands in the way of the process", said Mr. Kajwang.
The Ministry put the number of Kenyans holding valid identity cards at 20.78 million, of which 19.2 million are the old generation cards that have since been phased out by the law. The Immigration Department projects that 5 million Kenyans will require IDs before the 2012 general elections of which 3 million will be new applicants.

The ministry is working closely with provincial administration at the grassroots to boost issuance of ID cards and also distribution of the processed cards. The Ministry says there are over 260,000 processed cards that are yet to be collected by the applicants from their office in Nairobi and thousands of others in their offices countrywide.