Tag Archives: IEBC

The United States and other donors to the IEBC must not let (again) the power of incumbency in Kenya obscure the dangers of “fear and loathing” on the campaign trail

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This is a straightforward lesson.  We have acted in this movie in Kenya before.
(To refresh, here is my piece “The Debacle of 2007: How Kenyan politics was frozen and an election was stolen with U.S. connivance” in The Elephant.)

Mistakes will be made when we are out and about involved in our way in the world. (Most conspicuously, per Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign for the presidency, the 2003 invasion of Iraq.  This recognition of error obtained consensus among at least the top dozen Republican candidates and the top four Democrats so it seems to be a rare “given” that we should not have to argue about now.)

We cannot undo the past but at the very least we have a moral responsibility to take cognizance of (very) recent history in Kenya involving many of the very same Kenyan ethnic/commercial/political leaders and a continuity of institutional and individual players and assumed interests of the United States as well.  Our choices have consequences, too.

We are in denial if we pretend that we did not fail abjectly (to the extent we even tried really) to effectively foster any type of justice in Kenya for the 2008 Post Election Violence.  If we can excuse our asserted complacency in 2007 on the argument that the full magnitude of the violence was unprecedented (in spite of the 1992 and 1997 “campaigns”) we certainly do not have that excuse this time.

You cannot but hear bitter strident speech about Kenya’s presidential election from Kenya’s politicians, and from Kenya’s journalists, lawyers, pundits, publishers, moguls, ranchers and hustlers (of whatever ethnic or national origin or income).   Compared to 2007 it is more aggressive and open and it is coming in some key part directly from the President and even more so from those very close to him and from the Deputy President.

In 2007 Mwai Kibaki and Moody Awori were not using the “bully pupit” of the Presidency and Vice Presidency to openly disparage and ridicule those with less power (even though Kibaki was obviously not in hindsight of any mind to actually risk being found to have lost the election by the ECK).

Likewise, during that campaign Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, on opposite sides of the presidential campaign once “retired President” Moi realigned to support Kibaki mid-year, were far more restrained in their widely public statements as candidates
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Kenya’s election “compromised and contaminated” or “compromised and bungled” by IEBC finds Supreme Court

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The Supreme Court of Kenya’s long awaited reading of its full opinion on the presidential election petition this morning squarely hammered the discrepancies between the process requirements of the law and what the evidence showed  happened.

The Court found explicitly, for example, that the affidavit submitted by the IEBC asserting that all of the tally papers had security features was contradicted by the documentary evidence eventually produced by the IEBC under order of the Court in the hearing.

The Judiciary website seems to have been down from before the announcement so I will have to wait to read the opinion.

The Court made clear that there would be no basis for it to uphold a similarly compromised process in a fresh election.

The ball is squarely in the “court” of the IEBC and its advocates and funders to grapple with the “contamination” and its causes to find a solution.

(On the submission of the Preliminary Statements of Election Observation Missions as evidence to bolster the defense of the IEBC, the Court said they could not be considered as they did not go beyond looking at the voting and counting at a sample of polling stations.  This is good news in correcting one of the flaws from the original 2013 presidential petition litigation.)

Update: Business Daily: “”Supreme  Court says IEBC failures led to poll nullification”.   

Globe and Mail:  “Kenyan Court blasts Election Commission as political tensions rise”

 

“Sitting on” the embargoed USAID-funded IRI exit poll indicating opposition win in Kenya 2007 election, I wished someone would subpoena me

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A Kenyan blogger wrote in early 2008 that  I “should be” subpoenaed after I was reported in Slate magazine as “sitting on” the embargoed USAID-funded IRI exit poll. I would have welcomed it. Sadly no subpoena came.  No one approached me except from the media as I hoped that the decision would be made in Washington to end the embargo as Joel Barkan and I urged.

The exit poll was publicly released by the the University of California San Diego research team at an event at CSIS in Washington only in July 2008 after the six month publicity restriction in their consulting contract with IRI. [ed. note: Remember it was then released in August by IRI.]

By that time, it mattered  for “the war for history” as to whether the election had actually been stolen or not, but had no real time impact in that Kibaki’s second full term was well underway.  The “Kreigler Commission” reporting to President Kibaki was staying off the question of what really happened to the presidential tally at the ECK.

Lessons for today, in time to matter?

What if vital information about what happened with the presidential tally is in the hands of people working for the donor-funded election assistance operations who wish they could provide that information and answer the vital questions?

FREE, FAIR AND CREDIBLE? Turning The Spotlight On Election Observers in Kenya | The Elephant

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Published today in The Elephant: FREE,FAIR AND CREDIBLE? Turning The Spotlight On Election Observers in Kenya | The Elephant by Ken Flottman.

Kenya’s presidential election petition – it was clear IEBC did not follow the law, even before Supreme Court Registrar showed serious skulldugery with ICT

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Discussing Kenyan elections can get tense, even among friends who are not Kenyans and try to be relatively dispassionately analytical. I have copied here one of my emails from an ongoing exchange in late August during the pendency of the Presidential Petition in the Supreme Court. My friend with whom I was corresponding is a Westerner who knows far more about Kenya (and lots of other relevant things) than I do and is someone I greatly respect (he is also a layman as far the legal profession goes). My friend was much more sanguine than I about the IEBC’s implementation and use of the KIEMS Results Transmission System, both in terms of facts and law. This explains how I saw things (and still do):

Uploading an alleged Form 34A offline after the election and reporting of results reflects a failure of the use of the RTS by its terms as consistently represented by IEBC and IFES until well after the election.

It is simply not the same thing at all in my opinion.

Even ELOGs sample in their PVT found 13.5% of Polling Stations did not publicly post Form 34A. If it wasn’t scanned and transmitted in real time, or at least scanned with delayed transmission upon being moved into a coverage area contemporaneously, and it also wasn’t publicly posted, then it cannot credibly treated as if it was reliable without explanation and evidence.

Your figure of 29,000 and the IEBC tweet claiming all but just over 1000 leaves a huge gap in a very short time period. (Further, I understand you to refer to some “backlog in uploading them” which apparently refers to something other than KIEMS transmission, so I am not sure at all that I am really understanding your argument.)

I also disagree with your characterization of “clear rules” of Kenyan election law implementing the Maina Kiai court decision against the IEBC. IFES advised to the contrary in their last pre-election publication on the process that I am aware of, the July 20 FAQ that also explained how KIEMS was to work.

People may have gambled that Chebukati could use the Court of Appeals ruling to announce on day 3 of 7 “final results” from most but not all alleged Form 34Bs without the 34As having been demonstrably transmitted to the Constituencies to generate the Form 34Bs. This tactic might very well win the Supreme Court of Kenya, legitimately or illegitimately, but I don’t find it persuasive myself, nor do I find that provides any justification for the assertive lack of basic transparency.

Kenyan lawyer Nelson Havi’s piece in The Elephant from about the same time gives a good summary of the issues in the Presidential Petition and the Petitiiners basic case: “KENYA ON TRIAL: Truth, Justice and the Supreme Court.”

Best overall international piece so far on Kenya Supreme Court decision

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Lots of good journalism out today, but this story from Peter Fabricus in my evening Daily Maverick Weekend Thing strikes me as hitting many of the right notes: “Kenya’s courts step up to electoral plate.”

One of the most important lessons from today is how cowed Kenya’s media really is by the Government.  This decision did not have to come as quite such a suprise if Kenya’s media had felt free–or been brave enough–to just cover the polling stations and constituency tally centres.  But we went through this in 2007 (when results were broadcast then taken down), and 2013 when self-censorship was the order of the day.

Today, Kenya took a big step forward on the rule of law — a sign that perhaps the press can become in the future in fact as free as the Constitution provides and the West pretends.

For Kenyan must reads, start with Nanjala Nyabola, “Why I’m proud to be an African today,” at IRINnews.com.

Kenya Election: How IEBC CEO explained what was legally required for electronic Results Transmission and how KIEMS was to meet requirement

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“IEBC’s high-tech system to guard against ballot stuffing” The Standard July 22, 2017

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) has assured that the integrity of the August 8 election has been guaranteed through tamper-proof technology.

The Kenya Integrated Elections Management Systems (KIEMS) has unique features that will make double voting, ballot stuffing, and irreconcilable voting patterns impossible. IEBC is already preparing to deploy 45,000 KIEMS kits to be used in all the 40,883 polling stations across the country.

Every polling station has been allocated a Kit with a maximum number of 700 voters depending on the size of the polling centre. By implication, voters in a polling station cannot exceed the allocated number.

The KIEMS technology has two main functions in this election. The first is biometric identification of voters on the election day and results transmission after counting the votes.

The Commission has made it mandatory for all voters to be identified biometrically to close the doors for possibility of resurrection of dead voters.

IEBC Chief executive officer Ezra Chiloba said the Commission has invested heavily in technology and can guarantee successful transmission of election results.

“We have no choice really. The law already demands of us to electronically transmit presidential results from the polling station to the tallying centres,” he said.

After counting of results, the presiding officers in the presence of party agents are expected to type the total number of votes garnered by each candidate into the kit.

The kit aggregates the results automatically and the total number of votes cast for all the candidates is recorded. In cases where the number of voters exceeds the total number of registered voters, the kits shall automatically reject the results. This measure, according to the Commission, effectively makes ballot stuffing impossible.

As an additional measure to guarantee the integrity of elections results, the presiding officer shall scan Form 34A using the KIEMS kit. The Form 34A is signed by both the presiding officer and party agents. Once scanned, the presiding officer shall, together with the text results, send the same to the national tallying centre and constituency tallying centres.

The kit shall equally report turnout trends periodically throughout the day. With this kind of monitoring, the Commission says, ability to identify abnormal voting patterns is guaranteed.

At the end of the voting, said Mr Chiloba, the presiding officers in the presence of party agents are required to reconcile the number of voters recorded by KIEMS as having voted and the number of ballot papers issued.

“We have two procedures that minimise the risk of ballot stuffing. One, the voter turnout as recorded by KIEMS. Two, the ballot papers reconciliation that happens at the end of voting. The number of ballots papers issued and the records of voter turnout as registered by KIEMS should be able to reconcile,” he said.

The Commission contends that once the presiding officer has pressed the “Submit” button, the results cannot be changed by anyone.

Using an encrypted format, the results shall then be transmitted to the tallying centres through a secure network in real-time. The public will be able to view the results online. Similarly, Media will have a dedicated connection to access real-time results as well.

According to ICT sources within the commission, the KIEMS have a unique in-built audit trail. The in-build audit trail enables the commission to collect all the kits and to retrieve records from the SD cards for any analysis at the end of voting. This in-built accountability tools implies that the process of voting can be subjected to objective scrutiny at any point in time after voting.
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Clearly, much of what Chiloba and the IEBC described here just over two weeks before the election did not actually happen after the votes were cast and counted on election day.

Why?  Well, much of the explanation likely rests on the new information disclosed in the Registrar’s reports on the Forms 34A and Forms 34B and the IEBC ICT review in the Supreme Court litigation.  Other things were going on within the process than described.

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.

What Carter Center actually said in Preliminary Statement: “Given that the tallying process is ongoing, the Center is currently unable to provide an overall assessment.”

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From the Carter Center Preliminary Statement (August 10):  Carter Center Prelim Stmt of Vote Tally and Transmission of Results

For a Kenyan view, see “IEBC results: We’ve more questions than answers” writes Muthoni Wanyeki in The East African on August 22.

IEBC having admitted in Supreme Court that Results Transmission System did not work as advertised, March 2017 contract for KIEMS acquisition should be tabled

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This is very basic stuff.  Surely one of the minimum steps required for transparency in the administration of Kenya’s election.

And who in good faith can be against that?

I will have more to say about Kenya’s 2017 election eventually, after I finally get the public records I am due from USAID from my 2015 request regarding our assistance in the administration of the 2013 election. 

[To be direct I have heard contradictory things–all hearsay–about what role the U.S. did or did not play in the KIEMS acquisition.  I just do not know.  Likewise the role of other donors.]