Clean Your Party Membership Register Before Nominations

Many parties let only registered members vote in primaries and apply as aspirants. If your register is messy, your primaries will be messy too. Start cleaning months before nominations, not the week before.

Know which register counts

Parties submit their membership records to the Office of the Registrar of Political Parties (ORPP), and Kenyans can check which party they belong to through ORPP’s online service. Your internal register should match what ORPP holds.

Old spreadsheets, rally sign-up sheets and WhatsApp lists are not your register. Treat them as leads until someone has checked them.

Agree the basics

Find duplicates and disputed memberships

Common problems include the same person entered twice, wrong ID numbers and people who say they never joined. In past years, many Kenyans found they had been registered to parties they had never joined.

Don’t merge or delete records automatically. A person should check each possible duplicate and record the decision.

When members want to resign or move to another party, follow the process in the Political Parties Act and ORPP’s procedures, and keep a record.

Get the ward right

Primaries are organised by ward and constituency. A member recorded in the wrong ward may be turned away, or may vote in the wrong contest.

Ask branch officials to review the list ward by ward. Put records with no ward in an “unassigned” list, and give that list an owner.

Lists worth working through

Set a simple correction process

Tell members how to fix their record: visit the branch office, or send an SMS or email. Say what proof they need and who approves the change.

Keep a log of every change: what changed, who changed it and why.

Correcting a phone number is not the same as deciding whether someone can vote in a primary. Keep corrections and eligibility decisions separate.

Freeze the register before primaries

Set and announce a cut-off date for changes before the primaries. After the cut-off, allow only urgent corrections approved by a named official.

Take a dated snapshot of the register used for each primary, and keep it. If a primary is challenged, this is what you will need to show.

Protect members’ data. Aspirants often ask for membership lists to campaign. Decide what details, if any, they may receive, and record who got what. The Data Protection Act 2019 applies. UshindiOS helps parties manage their register by ward, with controlled changes and a full change history.

Before the primaries, have