For the IEBC, managing the credibility of the repeat elections centres
around its results transmission system, and that includes barring
returning officers from sending results in the form of text messages
without attaching proof in the form of signed forms. PHOTO | FILE |
NATION MEDIA GROUP
Elections officials will not be allowed to submit poll results
without accompanying them with proof of signed forms in the October 26
repeat elections, a contract between the elections agency and French
security firm OT-Morpho shows.
This is among the steps
the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, in the Sh2.4
billion agreement, is pushing, to seal the loopholes that resulted in
the annulment of the August 8 presidential election by the Supreme
Court.
If the recommendations are implemented fully,
all election officials at polling stations and constituency tallying
centres will only send signed result forms to the IEBC’s transmission
system, eliminating the contentious text messages used in the previous
election.
The French firm, which is supplying
information technology services to the IEBC, has employed 400 people to
reconfigure the kits and will also be deploying one support engineer per
constituency on Election Day.
OT-MORPHO
OT-Morpho,
while accepting IEBC’s request, says in the agreement that “a new
function of results transmission system application will allow IEBC
returning officers to upload the official Forms 34B filled, verified and
signed by IEBC”.
Also, the repeat election is not being prepared to go to a
run-off, meaning the IEBC has locked out Third Way Alliance of Kenya
candidate Ekuru Aukot, who is in the High Court fighting to be part of
the race.
“The system is configured for the two
following candidates: Mr Kenyatta (and) Mr Odinga,” says OT-Morpho.
“Since there are only two candidates, the system is not configured to
deal with any second round. Due to the limited timeframe, the system
cannot accept other candidates.”
This means IEBC is anticipating a simple majority winner as stipulated under Article 138 (7) of the Constitution.
In
the new changes, presiding officers at polling stations will now be
able to transmit results to both the constituency tallying centre and
the national tallying centre. They could not do that during the last
General Election and, in some places, were baffled that there were
results from their constituencies on the IEBC portal yet they had not
seen the actual forms.
TRANSMISSION
“During
the August 8th elections,” OT-Morpho says in the agreement, “the
results transmission system application on the tablet allowed
(officials) to send text results only after a first failed attempt. This
option will be removed; only both text and image will be allowed.”
The
disadvantage of this is noted in the agreement as there is no relief
for the 11,155 polling stations the IEBC had said were in areas without
3G and 4G mobile phone network, which is deemed necessary for images to
be sent.
“As a consequence,
polling stations in low connectivity areas will fail to send results,”
says the French firm, and polling officials will be required to move to
areas with at least 3G coverage to send their results.
Reconfiguring
the kits to ensure they send images will get the commission out of the
conundrum of having data it cannot explain. At the Supreme Court, the
IEBC’s lawyers could not explain the statement by their client that the
information on the portal was “statistics” since the commission could
not announce provisional results.
HOURLY REPORTS
The
provisional results transmitted by the presiding officers will be
consolidated at the constituency level into reports for the IEBC to
compare the provisional data transmitted from the field with the
official Forms 34B.
The
system will be programmed to generate reports on an hourly basis for
all constituencies and these will be displayed on a portal.
The
agreement states that the connection between Safaricom, which shall
provide the SIM cards, and the dedicated communication channel for the
transmission of the results shall remain the same as the one used during
the last General Election.
Ahead of the repeat elections, IEBC has been trying to have dialogue with the main political players, the National Super Alliance and the Jubilee Party, in a bid to reach a compromise on demands by the two sides.
The
talks, at the Bomas of Kenya, collapsed on Thursday after Nasa
protested the move by Jubilee to push through proposed changes to the
Elections Act and the Election Offences.
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