Kenya’s Presidential Election in a nutshell:  1) widespread failure or non-use of purchased electonic Results Transmission System (as in 2007 and 2013); 2) lack of transparent or complete “complementary” substitute (as in 2007 and 2013)

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The voting and counting, as I have previously noted, is the same this year as in the past.  The voter register remained messy again with likely more than one million dead voters and plenty of ineligibles, and was not fixed and locked down as required.  From outside appearances so far, however, the EVID system seems to have substantially worked this time which may have been a big improvement from 2007 and 2013 in limiting in person voting by ineligibles.

The RTS system which was to transmit from a unique registered and logged-in KIEMS device for each of the polling stations a scanned image of the finalized executed Form 34A simultaneously to the various tally centres, either was substantially misused or failed to work as advertised and/or some combination of the two.  The Jubilee majority in Parliament early this year, coincident with the turnover from the Hassan-chaired IEBC to the Chebukati-chaired IEBC passed over opposition objection the option of allowing a complementary substitute for the electronic system.  As far as I can tell the IEBC did not actually plan and establish such an alternative system, nor certainly did they effectuate it in any comprehensive, demonstrable, traceable way.

Nevertheless, rather than take the seven days alloted by law, Chebukati announced alleged final Presidential results roughly 72 hours after poll closing.

Is this “close enough for horseshoes and Kenyans” or is more required to successfully conduct and conclude a presidential election in Kenya in 2017?

Update: my email to a friend regarding the Court-ordered review of IEBC presidential election data:

I haven’t finished reviewing the Registrars report in detail, but it seems clear to me that the IEBC declined to provide, as directly ordered by the Court, the evidence that would verify or falsify alleged transmittal of scanned Forms 34A by KIEMS sets from Polling Stations to Tally Centres (Constituency, Cty, Nat’l).

Whatever the Court decides to do about the on the ruling petition as a whole, allowing the IEBC to flex its muscle over the Supreme Court openly in this way would probably pretty well tell us where things are headed on rule of law issues over the foreseeable future and whether there will be a serious challenge to Ruto in 2022-32.

See “Audit Report on IEBC Servers: login trails, Forms 34A and B not provided” in The Star.