The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission has made several changes to its preparations for the October 26 presidential election.
First, the Commission is calling for the presiding officers to be allowed to open ballot boxes to correct wrongly filled result forms without a court order.
The Commission will also provide unlimited access to information to all authorized officials to increase transparency of the election.
Presidential candidates will be provided with names of the co-ordinators of the 40,883 polling stations to avoid cases of ‘ungazetted polling stations’ that emerged in the previous elections.
The Returning Officers will have access to the Kenya Integrated Elections Management System (KIEMS) kits at the constituency level to facilitate them to check which stations have sent in results and which ones have not.
According to the polls body, incase the KIEMS kits fail, they will be replaced and if the replacements fail, the presiding officer will call the RO who raise the matter to the director of ICT to authorize the use of the printed register to identify voters.
The Kits will relay coordinates to enable the PO move from one polling station to another which will provide an explanation to avoid issues of “ungazetted polling stations.”
During the upcoming election, returning officers will project results as they key them. Agents will be given all printed forms 34B for verification.
Once a PO fills a form 34A, they will transmit the results on KIEMS then physically deliver the form to the RO at the constituency level for comparison with 34B.
The Commission was forthright that it will be impossible to configure the kits to accommodate changes on candidates. That does not mean that the IEBC will not relay the results electronically.
Under the revised workflow, IEBC will ensure that all forms 34A and 34B are electronically transmitted.
[caption caption="IEBC Chairman, Wafula Chebukati"]
[/caption]
The IEBC Chairman, who is the presidential returning officer, will announce the results from the counties, declare the presidential election results and deliver the written declaration to the Chief Justice and incumbent President.
The PO will count the votes and tabulate them in Form 34A before announcing the final result. The candidates’ agents will be asked to sign Form 34A before stamping all copies of the form. The election results will be keyed in from the Form 34A into the KIEMS kit and verified against what is recorded in Form 34A.[caption caption="IEBC Commissioners"]
[/caption]
