IEBC explains top court role on Form 34A
By Rawlings, August 4, 2022
Complaints or discrepancies that may arise in Form 34A will only be resolved by the Supreme Court through a presidential election petition, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) announced yesterday.
IEBC’s declaration means that should any of the presidential candidates or agents point out discrepancies in the results captured in Form 34A, then the only remedy is to file an election petition at the Supreme Court.
“Any complaints or discrepancies that may arise in the results Form 34A can only be resolved by the Supreme Court through a presidential election petition. Any complaints with respect to the results announced at the polling station must be resolved by the Presiding Officer,” IEBC chair Wafula Chebukati said.
He was responding to Azimio-One Kenya and Kenya Kwanza formations concern about the results declaration form known as Form 34A.
Chebukati said at the close of voting, the Presiding Officer is required to count votes and enter results in Form 34A, take a scanned image of the form using KIEMS kit and transmit the image to the national tallying centre.
The Presiding Officer, he said, will provide a copy of the results to the agents and observers and deliver the original to the Constituency Returning Officer for onward transmission to the chairperson of the Commission who is the Returning Officer for the presidential elections.
“There can be no discrepancy between the results recorded in Form 34A at the polling station and those transmitted electronically or even those received by the Returning Officer because it is essentially the same form captured by the Presiding Officer, witnessed by agents with a resultant five carbon copies,” he said.
Chebukati explained that the constituency returning officer is required to collate all Form 34As, prepare Form 34B, and submit all the 34As together with 34B to the Presidential Returning officer.
He added that in the event that there is a discrepancy between Form 34As and Form 34B with respect to the entries for any polling station, the entry in Form 34A will be taken as the correct reflection of the results at the polling station.
On the security of the ballot paper, Chebukati said they had put in place elaborate security features on the ballots and results declaration forms to avoid attempts to reproduce them.
According to the electoral agency, the security features in both the ballot papers and the results declaration forms include visible and invisible security features, polling station data personalisation, barcodes and QR codes.
“The commission in partnership with the National Police Service has deployed armed security to guard ballot papers in transit and at the respective warehouses,” said Chebukati.
He further explained that Section 105 of the Elections Act 2011 provides that all police officers deployed at the polling station are election officials and are under the instructions and direction of the commission.
Asked what measures the commission had put in place to comply with the provision of Regulations 69 (1) (d), Chebukati said IEBC is guided by the decision of the Supreme Court in the National Super Alliance (NASA) vs IEBC (2017).
He maintained that the commission will only use printed register of voters upon confirmation that the KIEMS kits had completely failed and that there was no possibility of repair or replacement.
The commission he said, had resolved to only use a booklet of the two booklets bearing statutory presidential results Form 34A that has one original and five self-carbonating copies.
Apart from the poll officials and security agents, other authorised persons to be at the polling station include the media, observers and polling station agents who will be allowed to take an image of the original results Form 34A.
Chebukati said that KIEMS kits has an internal battery and two external batteries (power banks) that are fully charged before deployment, adding that the three batteries have sufficient power to last beyond the voting and transmission period.
“The KIEMS kit voter identification function is offline, hence does not require network connectivity. For purposes of electronic transmission of results, the KIEMS kit is fitted with both primary and secondary GSM sim cards to ensure continuity of network in case one fails.”
“The commission will deploy satellite modems as back up and in the event of a failure, the Presiding Officer shall transmit results from the Constituency Tallying Centre in the presence of agents.”