The Court of Appeal has upheld the High Court's decision for the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to use a manual backup system during the General Election in case the electronic system fail.
The judges issued the ruling on Friday noting that there was no reason to set aside the decision of the High Court.
Earlier on, the lower court had dismissed the case filed by National Super Alliance (NASA) seeking to stop IEBC from using a manual backup system in case of technology failure.
In that case, NASA also wanted the elections postponed if IEBC could not guarantee that the electronic kits would not fail during the elections.
A three-judge bench of the High Court, however, dismissed the petition stating that the impact in case the electronic system failed would throw the entire elections into jeopardy and imperil the democracy of the country.
“The court, therefore, finds that it would not be feasible to declare that the elections to be held on the 8th of August 2017 be exclusively electronic,” the judges ruled.
The High Court also dismissed NASA's request to have the election postponed noting that the electoral body has mechanisms to salvage any failure that may occur during the elections.
"It would not be feasible to postpone the election as the date has been cast in stone," the judges stated.
The Opposition had moved to the High Court seeking orders compelling IEBC to exclusively use an electronic system.
Currently, IEBC is using the Kenya Integrated Electoral Management System – a combination of biometric voter registration, the electronic voter identification device and the results transmission system.
