IEBC new poll measures to avoid August 8 mistakes

IEBC new poll measures to avoid August 8 mistakes

The country will have to wait for long before knowing the winner in the October 26 repeat presidential election should IEBC implement its own proposals on result transmission.

Close sources to the Citizen Digital indicate that returning officers will be required to physically deliver constituency-based results to the National Tallying Center at the Bomas of Kenya in Nairobi before the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Chairperson, Wafula Chebukati, can declare the winner.

One of the undoing of the electoral commission chairperson during the presidential election petition at the Supreme Court was failure to verify the results he had received before declaring victory for President Uhuru Kenyatta. To cure the anomaly, all the 290 constituency returning officers (CROs) will be required to after submitting the scanned forms 34B via the electronic results transmission system, submit the original forms at the national tallying centre.

The CROs will also be obliged to present the bundles of forms 34A from all the polling stations within their constituencies, a process that will allow verification of results before Chebukati can determine and declare the final election outcome.

Given the expansive nature of constituencies and the transport constraints in far-flung regions, it could lead to delays in the announcement of the winner.

The commission plans to display provisional results on its website and at the tallying centre obtained from the electronically transmitted results from the polling stations.

In a bid to ensure all results declaration forms from polling stations are accounted for, the KIEMS kits will be reconfigured to make it impossible to transmit results without attaching forms 34A.

The Supreme Court was informed that some of the constituency returning officers submitted irregular forms with some lacking set security features. IEBC is now planning to standardize all forms 34B while providing extra copies to allow for reprinting should returning officers commit errors. They will however be required to account for each of the copies issued.

The electoral agency is also planning to install customized results declaration forms on laptops of the 290 CROs containing fixed details of polling stations in a constituency, the number of registered voters per station and the names of candidates such that the returning officers will only key in scores from each of the polling stations and tabulate the totals before printing on the security forms.

This coming at a time IEBC settled on Dubai based Al Ghurair Publishing and Printing firm to supply the ballot papers and results declaration forms after United Nation Development Program withdrew its offer.

Tags:

IEBC fresh presidential election IEBC Chairperson Wafula Chebukati Repeat poll KIEMS kit nullification of the August 8 presidential election.

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