NAIROBI, Kenya, Jul 4 – The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) will only collate results whose results forms have been physically presented to the different tallying centers at constituency and national level.
In an exclusive interview with Capital FM News on Monday, IEBC commissioner Francis Wanderi said this is to ensure the commission does not repeat systemic and transmissions inadequacies experienced in the 2017 presidential poll.
“Before Chebukati announces the results at Bomas, he must verify that the original has come to the national tallying centre and check that the numbers are properly collated, added and signed,” he stated.
“This means that you cannot send data. In 2017 they sent data in addition to results form. That’s what we are not going to do this time round.”
The Supreme Court nullified the August 8th 2017 general elections on the basis that the results form from each of the country’s 40,883 polling stations known as form 34A and other from 290 constituencies known as form 34B had various discrepancies.
The electronic transmission system broke down leading to the results not the forms being sent to the national tallying center, often by text message.
During the presidential petition, the commission announced that about 10,000 forms were unaccounted for, raising concerns over the poll credibility.
Wanderi further assured that the poll commission has put in measures to ensure that the 14 orders given by the Supreme Court in 2017 would be adhered to so as to avoid the 2022 polls being rendered a futile exercise.
“Some of those orders bordered on our internal processes and I want to ensure that all of them have been adhered to,” he said.
An independent audit of the roll of voters by KPMG unearthed a number of anomalies, including double registrations, suspicious voter transfers in 10 counties and names of dead voters.
Suspicions over the integrity of the voter register, voter identification kits, procurement of election materials and results transmission have led to accusations of vote-rigging in recent elections and dampened public confidence in the electoral body.