Kenyan elections have, overall, been peaceful and well-run, despite occasional delays and issues with the electronic gear in some regions of the nation.
After a heated campaign that was dominated by discussions about unemployment, living expenses, and corruption, this vote was held.
Raila Odinga, a former prime minister, and William Ruto, the vice president at the moment, are the front-runners for the presidency.
Following a disagreement with Mr. Ruto, the outgoing president Uhuru Kenyatta is supporting his erstwhile adversary Mr. Odinga.
According to the election commission, slightly more than 30% of the 22 million eligible voters had already cast their ballots as of noon local time (09:00 GMT).
In comparison to 2017, the turnout in Kenya’s central Nyeri region was low, according to a top election official who spoke to journalists.
Mr Odinga was mobbed by supporters when he went to vote in Kibra – one of his strongholds in the capital, Nairobi.
He did not speak to the press, but his wife, Ida Odinga, said he was “upbeat about the election”.
Mr. Ruto promised to accept the election results when he cast his ballot in the Rift Valley town of Eldoret.
According to him, all the contenders have promised to accept the results for the first time in Kenya’s multi-party democracy’s history, he told the BBC.
In 2007, a disagreement over election results sparked weeks of violence that resulted in the deaths of over 1,200 people and the eviction of about 600,000 people from their homes.
The early-morning voters on Tuesday at a polling place in a primary school in Nairobi’s Westlands neighbourhood expressed some discontent.
For 90 minutes, they were prevented from entering the school’s grounds.
The reason for the delay was not clear and some people started chanting: “We want to vote!”
“I was here very early. It’s been disappointing that we got here early and had to wait for a long time,” voter Alex Kipchoge told the BBC.
But once voting really began, everything went smoothly.
Additionally, there have been complaints of delays in Mombasa’s coastal region and several areas of the nation’s northeast.
There have been a few complaints regarding malfunctioning computerised fingerprint technology used to identify voters. However, the election commission reported that out of a total of over 46,000 votes, just 200 have been invalidated.
The voting period is 11 hours, and the polls are anticipated to shut at 17:00 local time (14:00 GMT). Voting will be open to anybody in line when it closes.
A mix-up of ballot papers in some locations for some of those votes on the eve of the election has once again raised concerns about the organisation of the general election, which is taking place concurrently with a number of other elections for local and national government.
The Supreme Court decided that the electoral commission had broken the law when it came to the electronic transfer of the vote tallies from the polling places, which led to the results of the most recent presidential election in 2017 being declared invalid.
“Illegalities and irregularities” had occurred, according to judges’ rulings.
Mr. Odinga, the leading opposition candidate at the time, abstained from the rerun, which Mr. Kenyatta won.
The chairman of the electoral commission, Wafula Chebukati, who was also in charge of the 2017 vote, has frequently tried to reassure Kenyans that his team will be up to the task this time.
But Monday’s logistical problems have increased the pressure on him.
