The Ol Kalou Registration Drive, 21 September to 20 October

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) is holding an Enhanced Continuous Voter Registration (ECVR) exercise in Ol Kalou, in Nyandarua County, from Monday 21 September to Tuesday 20 October 2026. Registration desks open every day of the week, weekends included, in every ward of the constituency. Anyone who is a Kenyan citizen aged 18 or over, with an original national ID card or a valid Kenyan passport, can register, transfer, correct their details or check their status.

The commission set out the exercise in a Gazette notice dated Tuesday 15 September 2026, Nairobi Leo reported. Capital FM carried the public notice the same day.

Why Ol Kalou has a drive of its own

Registration in Ol Kalou stopped in the spring. The Standard reported that the IEBC suspended it on 16 April 2026, following the death of the area MP, David Kiaraho (Ol Kalou). The commission said the suspension followed the legal and procedural rules that apply when a parliamentary seat falls vacant: the register used for a by-election has to be fixed before the vote.

That left Ol Kalou out of the IEBC's biggest push of the year. ECVR Phase I ran from 30 March to 28 April 2026 and registered 2,345,476 new voters, the Nation reported. The Elections Observation Group (ELOG), which compiled the IEBC's weekly figures, lists Ol Kalou among six electoral areas where the enhanced exercise did not take place during that period because of a by-election or an election petition.

The by-election was held on 16 July 2026. The Democracy for Citizens Party (DCP) candidate, Sammy Kamau, won with 35,440 votes against 5,450 for Samuel Muchina Nyagah of the United Democratic Alliance (UDA), The Star reported. Turnout was about 57 per cent, with 41,656 of 73,480 registered voters casting a ballot. The full count is in DCP wins Ol Kalou by 35,440 to 5,450.

With the seat filled, the Gazette notice cites "the conduct of by-elections in Ol-Kalou Constituency" as the reason for the new exercise, alongside Articles 83 and 88(4)(a) of the Constitution, sections 5, 7 and 8 of the Elections Act, 2011, and the Elections (Registration of Voters) Regulations, 2012.

Where to register

The notice lists four kinds of place:

• the County Assembly ward level, meaning a registration point in each ward of the constituency;
• the Ol Kalou IEBC constituency office;
• selected Huduma Centres and institutions of higher learning inside the electoral area;
• the IEBC Customer Experience Centre on the ground floor of Anniversary Towers in Nairobi.

The commission may approve other points during the month. Capital FM and The Standard both reported that the service runs Monday to Sunday for the whole period.

What you can do at the desk

Four services are on offer. You can register for the first time, transfer your registration from another area, update or correct your details, and confirm that you are on the register.

Transfers and corrections have one catch, according to the IEBC notice as reported by Nairobi Leo. A voter moving their registration must appear in person at the constituency office of the area they are moving to. A voter correcting their details must go to the constituency office where they are registered now. So a resident of Ol Kalou who registered in Nakuru and wants to vote at home does the transfer in Ol Kalou; one who wants to fix a misspelt name on an Ol Kalou registration also does it in Ol Kalou.

Bring the document itself. A waiting card is not enough. The general process is explained in how to register as a voter in Kenya and, for movers, how to transfer your voter registration to a different ward.

After 20 October

Once the ECVR closes, the IEBC said, Continuous Voter Registration and the regular revision of the register go back to the Ol Kalou constituency office. That office is open Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm, except on public holidays. Registration therefore does not stop on 20 October; it just becomes harder to reach for anyone who does not live near the office.

No date had been announced by 23 September 2026 for a second national ECVR phase or for the close of registration before the 10 August 2027 general election.

How it fits the national target

The IEBC wants 28.5 million registered voters for 2027, against 22.1 million in 2022. On 20 August 2026 it said 2,936,516 new voters had been registered since continuous registration began on 29 September 2025, Capital FM reported. That leaves a long way to go, and the gap is explained in IEBC's registration target.

Ol Kalou is one of five constituencies in Nyandarua. It is small next to that national number, but its 73,480 voters in July are the baseline against which this month will be measured. The IEBC had not published a registration target for the Ol Kalou drive as of 23 September 2026, and it had not said when it would release the figures.