If all tech fails IEBC will use hard copy forms to declare the results

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) has announced that, in the event that data which was transmitted electronically has some discrepancies, they will revert to the hard copy forms to declare the results.

“The Commission is aggregating result forms and comparing with the data that was transmitted electronically so as to establish if there is any variance. In the event that there is a some discrepancies, the data from the hard copy forms take precedence over the electronic data and will therefore be used to declare the results,” the commission announced via a post on their website.

Currently, over 40 scanned copies of the constituency election result tally forms 34Bs have been received at the National Tallying Centre, Bomas of Kenya, Nairobi.

The 34B is an aggregation of polling station result forms 34As. Polling officials from each of the 40,883 travel to Constituency Tallying Centres to physically hand-in of forms 34As to their respective Returning Officers, ROs

“Political party agents endorse result forms once they are satisfied that they reflect the outcomes. There are 290 constituency tallying centres and 47 county tallying centres,” the post added.

During a press conference, IEBC, Chief Executive, Ezra Chiloba, announced that the technical delays seen in the refreshing of the portal of the presidential results were brought about by front end issues, insisting that there is no issues with the back end.

“With regards to the technical hitch that we mentioned, it was not a back end issue, the back-end processes are OK; in fact the kits have been pushing in a lot of data so far we are talking about 28,000 stations reporting. At that time there was a lot of data from the field,” said Chiloba.

Kenya’s opposition presidential candidate, Raila Odinga, threw a spanner in the works by announcing that it was indeed IEBC’s IT systems that were hacked to manipulate the election results.

“From the information in our possession, some persons gained entry into the IEBC Election Management Database and assumed the role of our collective sovereign,” said Mr. Odinga via a press statement, posted on ODM official website.

Mr Odinga said that the IEBC must be fully accountable. He added that Chris Msando’s logins were used to gain access into the IEBC Core Server.

“As the Officer responsible for elections, Mr. Msando had access as the Super User who has all access and can edit other users or alter data. His logins were used to gain access into the IEBC Core Server and freely alter election data as they pleased forgetting one key element, turning off logging.” Odinga added.