An audit of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Integrated Database Management System (IDMS) has unearthed 14 mysterious Returning Officers (ROs) running the system.
According to The Standard, audit firm KPMG conducted an independent examination and discovered that the digital voters register had over 2 million mysterious voters.
The report indicated that the mysterious Returning Officers were able to "transfer, delete, insert, trigger, truncate, and update the voters register at will," and "one user, Postgress, had superuser access privileges."
According to the report, KPMG also discovered that the 14 Returning Officers were not gazetted but had worked alongside 290 IEBC officers in charge of the constituencies in previous elections.
The audit also revealed that the ‘digital’ ROs were backed by 513 generic accounts in the IDMS against 9 genuine accounts and had access to the voters’ register in the IDMS.
"In the IEBC's official Integrated Database Management System, the mysterious ROs are referred to as 'Embakasi South clerks' and 'IT users'," KPMG stated.
“Two RO accounts named Balambala-ro and Mbalambala-ro existed in the system. Only one Balambala is gazetted."
These voters registered using duplicate or fake documents while other people registered twice in previous elections.
“The officers had the elevated privileges in IEBC IDMs to transfer, change voter particulars and deactivate deceased voters and the constituency,” the audit report added as reported by The Standard.
Auditors also found that during the cleaning of the voters’ register, new voters were re-registered mysteriously.
KPMG also noted that the IDMS database was not set up to delete inactive accounts after 90 days as required by IEBC policy, and this made it more uncomplicated for those who had left the IEBC to gain access to the system.
“The total records within the Smartmatic register of voters that were provided to KPMG on May 5 was 21,970 597, including all biographic and biometric details.
"Smartmatic undertook duplication of the 2,184,472 records against the 21,970,597 records to generate a fully deduplicated register containing 21,710,728 voters, which was given to KPMG on May 18,” the report stated.
