Agency to send location-specific results forms, Kiems kits to check fraud
By Rawlings, July 20, 2022
The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) yesterday conducted the dry run for Results Transmission Technology from 580 selected polling stations countrywide.
This even as the commission maintained the Kenya Integrated Elections Management System (KIEMS) kit has been configured to send the result form from a polling station only once.
The electoral agency further stated once the result form has been sent, it will undergo some verification exercise before it is finally uploaded on the public portal and at the National Tallying Centre at the Bomas of Kenya.
IEBC’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Director Michael Ouma explained that the commission picked only 580 polling stations to accommodate the available KIEMs kits since they are currently being produced at the production centre in Nairobi’s Industrial Area.
“We scaled down the kits because of production that is currently going on in Industrial Area. The kit contains the unique code of a polling station,” said Ouma.
When the form is sent, the commission first checks if the form sent has not been modified, if the form is coming from a valid polling station and if the form has the necessary required features that can only be identified by the commission.
The physical demonstration at the National Tallying Centre only captures some polling stations in Dagoretti South, Makadara and Embakasi North.
According to the commission, security features on the result forms are from the printer and the results that will be used for the announcement is the hard copy from the polling station.
The commission further said they were forced to change a few features of the Results Transmission System to allow the Presiding Officer to have his or her signature before the KIEMs kit can transmit the result to the National Tallying Centre.
The result transmission system will encrypt the data that is sent and no one will be able to send a result form from any other polling station apart from the one that has been allocated and codes are given.