IEBC must do three things before October 26

What you need to know:

  • IEBC explained that they could not electronically transmit these forms from some locations that had no network or 3G mobile coverage.
  • However, the Supreme Court determined that Form 34Bs consolidated their data from Form34As, hence and therefore both forms must go hand in hand.
  • We also know that even if we hired the Pope to be the IEBC Chairman, but failed to fix the system, we shall still be back to the Supreme Court in November

You know by now that the Supreme Court finally rendered its full judgment on the presidential petition last week.

We shall ignore the stationery-related illegalities and irregularities cited on the Forms 34A, 34B and 34C.

Instead, we shall dissect what went wrong electronically with a view to correcting it.

The key electronic illegality cited by the court was the fact that the presidential results as captured on Form 34A at the polling stations, were in many instances, not scanned and transmitted simultaneously with the text-typed results.

Section 39(1C) of the Elections Act 2016  provides that:

“For purposes of a presidential election the Commission shall-

(a) electronically transmit, in the prescribed form, the tabulated results of an election for the President from a polling station to the Constituency tallying centre and to the national tallying centre;

(b) tally and verify the results received at the national tallying centre; and

(c) publish the polling result forms on an online public portal maintained by the Commission.

This means that the Presiding Officers at the polling stations were supposed to count, tally and make entries on Form34As and subsequently transmit both the scanned form and the text results to the constituency and the national tallying centers.

Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) explained that they could not electronically transmit these forms from some locations that had no network or 3G mobile coverage.

The court decline to accept this explanation citing the fact that IEBC had previously mapped out these locations and even advised POs to move to and transmit from the nearest polling stations or constituency stations that had coverage.

LESSON ONE: For the repeat elections, IEBC must transmit all the 41000+ scanned Form34As simultaneously with the text results. They must therefore invest in satellite transmission technologies in cases where there is no mobile internet coverage.

Even where transmission was successful, the results displayed were so basic and scanty that one could not tell which polling station the results were streaming from. No wonder the pregnant speculation about IEBC having illegal or virtual polling stations.

This is probably a weakness arising from the fact that constituency tallying centres were not electronically displaying the results the same way the national tallying centre was doing at Bomas of Kenya.

Part (a) of Section 31(c) above anticipates that the transmission of results will simultaneously hit both the national and constituency tallying centers.

The constituency results display could have more detail in terms of which polling stations these results are streaming from.  If this had happened, then what was on display at Bomas of Kenya, would easily be drilled down to reveal further details as captured at the constituency level.

Each incoming batch of results would therefore be accounted for in terms of the polling station it is coming from.

LESSON TWO:  The results display at both national and constituency level must provide for sufficient detail related to where exactly the incoming results originate from. 

The transmitting equipment, which is the Electronic Voter ID (EVID) kit, actually has this feature, which allows it to report its exact GPS location. One should not have to manually dig out this information from the scanned Form34As - most of which were missing anyway - at the point of transmission.

It seems IEBC was more concerned with the constituency level Form34Bs than the polling station level Form 34As, considering that the now famous Maina Kiai case determined that constituency level presidential results were final and were the ones to be used to complete the Presidential tally.

However, the Supreme Court determined that Form 34Bs consolidated their data from Form34As, hence and therefore both forms must go hand in hand.

The National Returning Officer, one Mr. Chebukati, therefore cannot ignore Form34As when announcing the final presidential results.

LESSON THREE: The system must be electronically reconfigured so that Form34B does not get to be finalised before the corresponding Form34As have been received and its data extracted and injected into Form34Bs.

Text results transmitted from the polling station can be consolidated automatically into an electronic Form34B, rather than waiting to be manually re-entered into some physical Form34B.

At constituency level, the Returning Office (RO) would simply crosscheck the electronic Form34As against the physical copies as they arrive from the polling stations. If satisfied, he or she would accept and electronically sign-off the Form34B.

The signed Form34Bs would also move through the system electronically and get consolidated into the Form34C that will eventually be used to declare the presidential results.

With less than 30 days to go, stakeholders should be putting more premium on fixing the system rather than on witch-hunting and driving out judges, commissioners or the secretariat out of office.

Of course the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) should proceed to investigate those individuals who may be criminally liable for the sins of omission or commission but this should not divert attention from improving the system.

We also know that even if we hired the Pope to be the IEBC Chairman, but failed to fix the system, we would still be back to the Supreme Court in November, given that the Pope or the Chairman cannot be everywhere along the electoral value chain.

Let us, therefore, put more emphasis on fixing the system rather than just on ‘fixing’ the individual in order to have a free, fair, accurate and verifiable election.

Mr Walubengo is a lecturer at Multimedia University of Kenya, Faculty of Computing and IT. Email: [email protected], Twitter: @Jwalu