By Duncan Miriri

NAIROBI, Dec 3 (Reuters) - Kenya's leading opposition presidential candidate said on Monday 850,000 voters could be locked out of a Dec. 27 election, and accused the government and the electoral commission of colluding to rig the results.

The chairman of the Electoral Commission of Kenya, Samuel Kivuitu, dismissed the charge as a politically motivated accusation from Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) presidential candidate Raila Odinga.

With less than a month to go to what is shaping up to be Kenya's closest-ever election, campaigns have reached fever pitch in east Africa's largest economy.

Like others Kenyan polls before it, this campaign period has been fraught with violence and accusations of fraud. The electoral commission is investigating reports of voting cards being bought, and several people have been killed at rallies.

Odinga, who holds a narrow lead over President Mwai Kibaki in most recent opinion polls, said mismatches between voter cards and national identity cards could mean thousands would be ineligible to vote. ODM discovered the problems during an audit of voter rolls, he added.

"We know the 850,000 ... are mainly from ODM strongholds. We see this as a complicit arrangement between government and ECK to rig the elections in advance," Odinga told reporters during a visit to the commission.

That amounts to around 6 percent of Kenya's 14 million eligible voters.

Kivuitu, speaking after he met Odinga and heard his comments, said the commission was non-partisan.

"These are politicians and they must throw some dirt, some dangerous arrows here and there. That was just a dangerous arrow. I cannot see myself colluding with anybody whether in government or in the opposition," Kivuitu told Reuters.

Kivuitu said Kenyans had become too enlightened to tolerate election rigging and he feared what they would do if it took place: "Someone like me better not even be in this commission and die of hunger than take sides."

Also on Monday a coalition of Kenyan pro-democracy organisations that documented election abuses in a report said candidates had handed out millions of Kenya shillings during nomination votes last month.

"The accumulation of funds used in the nomination process could be summed up at about 900 million Kenya shillings ($14.54 million)," said Charles Otieno, one of the report's authors.

Otieno said the figure was an extrapolation based on evidence from 48 of Kenya's more than 200 constituencies.

"The coming general election lacks credibility based on the conduct of nomination of political parties," said "The State of the Kenya Elections 2007 Report". (Additional reporting by Wangui Kanina and Abdi Sheikh, Writing by Bryson Hull)

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