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The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) will deploy multiple servers and provide access to the media, presidential candidates and public portals to ensure transparency in next year’s General Election.

IEBC chairperson Wafula Chebukati said that based on their experience in 2017 elections, the commission is planning for multiple servers through which the public can scrutinise election results.

While nullifying President Uhuru Kenyatta’s victory in the August 2017 election, the Supreme Court ordered the IEBC to grant the petitioners and court-appointed information technology experts read-only access to their servers.

IEBC officials, however, failed to comply with the order, and instead provided pre-downloaded logs on a hard disk, which contributed to the nullification of the election results.

Allay suspicions

“Our order of scrutiny was a golden opportunity for IEBC to discredit petitioner’s claims but they disobeyed the court order,” stated Deputy Chief Justice Philomena Mwilu in the Supreme Court decision of 2017.

Mwilu said that because of IEBC’s refusal to comply with the court order, judges were left with no choice but to determine that the election commission’s ICT system was infiltrated and compromised and the data therein interfered with.

Chebukati said elections results at the polling stations will be final and transmitted electronically to tallying centres and physically delivered to the Returning Officers for collation and declaration.

“To enhance transparency, accuracy, verification and promptness in election results management, the commission will deploy multiple servers and provide access to the media, presidential candidates and public portal.

This will put to rest the suspicions leveled against the Results Transmission System in the past,” said Chebukati.

Chebukati did not, however, disclose whether the commission will provide passwords and GPRS location of each Kenya Integrated Election Management System kit to be used during the presidential election.

The commission has also asked the Communications Authority to undertake Quality of Service (QoS) parameters of polling stations to identify those that do not have adequate coverage by 3G network before next year’s election.

“This will be critical to planning for alternative technologies for transmission of election results.

The Communications Authority and the IEBC have established a joint technical committee to address matters relating to communication network coverage,” he said.

While launching the 2020-2024 Strategic Plan, Election Operation Plan, Boundaries Review Operation Plan and Commission Policy Manuals, Chebukati, decried what he said was inadequate funding of the commission’s programmes like the continuous voter registration and education.

“The ideal scenario is that funds should be allocated for frequent field outreach programmes that sensitise the citizenry on their political rights and the electoral process as well as mobilise eligible voters to be registered,” said Chebukati.

According to Chebukati, financing the Commission under the Fund model, as the case is in South Africa and India among other jurisdictions would accord it financial autonomy to timely and adequately finance its programmes and operations.