Tag Archives: voting

Kenyan High Court, while finding no jurisdiction to examine IEBC’s process because it touches on the election of a President, states that civil society case raises issue that should be examined in appropriate forum

Posted on by
Reply

My personal heroes with Kenyan civil society, the African Centre for Open Governance, went to the Kenyan High Court this morning with a petition seeking equitable relief to direct the IEBC to follow the election law, focusing on the verification of actual voting by polling station as discussed in my previous post.

The court ordered argument on jurisdiction alone at 11:00am in front of a three judge panel appointed by the Supreme Court, with ruling to be announced at 3:00. The ruling was not announced until 4:30. The court ruled essentially that any challenge to IEBC procedure related to the presidential election such that it could only be brought in the Supreme Court of Kenya. IEBC’s lawyer also argued that the Supreme Court could only hear the case after the IEBC declares an election result, although that would presumably be a decision for the Supreme Court itself. Thus the High Court “struck off” the case, finding no jurisdiction to act.

However, the Court did state that they had reviewed the affidavits and other evidence presented in support of the petition and found that they raised issues that were “not idle” and should be pursued in the appropriate forum. And ruled that each side to bear its own costs.

Things remain with the IEBC the time being.

Taking Down My Last Post . . . Kenyan Election Is “Overeported” and “Under Researched” based on lack of transparency

Posted on by
Reply

The voting was over by Tuesday, March 5. The IEBC (the Kenyan replacement for the previous discredited Electoral Commission of Kenya or “ECK”) then has seven days to announce final results from the votes, which are cast by paper ballot and counted (only) at the individual polling stations around the country. The results at each of the more than 30,000 polling stations around the country are set out on multiple original official forms which are signed by the election official and the political party agents. One original is then posted on the door of the polling station where the counting has been done. This way the public can see the results while the armed guards at the door keep the public out of the room where the physical ballots are secured back in the sealed ballot box after counting.

Since the digital transmission of results failed for reasons that remain unexplained factually but much pontificated about, we are left with less information early than we would have hoped. But, as long as the forms remain available for each polling station, and are open to the public, we ought to be able to nail down how people voted–at least as the votes were counted.

Unfortunately, there is much pressure to rush and do something less than verification based on the actual documented count of the votes.

In 2007, the actual voting results were ultimately never released or disclosed, and while many court petitions were successfully adjudicated in parliamentary and local races, the Kreigler Commission appointed under the post election settlement to investigate the failed election passed on any further effort to actually determine the presidential votes as counted and announced at the polling stations. While there are alleged “official results” published by the ECK, they are only alleged aggregated numbers by parliamentary constituency, not by actual unit of voting and counting.

For my American readers, imagine results for the presidential election that are announced only in aggregate by Congressional District.

See my previous post for the results at the polling station where I observed. This information should be available for each polling station, and should then add up to what is reported as a matter derivatively on up the chain.

Kenyan Election Day–voting, counting, posting Form 34 on the door

Posted on by
Reply

20130305-001845.jpg

20130305-001939.jpg

20130305-001748.jpg

20130305-001831.jpg

Closing out polling station and presidential count: amazing Kenyans exceed 80% turnout in spite of technology failure

Posted on by
1

Okay, congratulations are in order for a great job by presiding officers and polling clerks, and incredibly patient voters at the polling centre where I spent the late afternoon and on until finishing the presidential count and posting the signed off results on the door to be photographed at the stream I was covering.

Everyone got better at adapting to the absence of the technology and the cumbersome process and voters moved much faster through the remaining lines in late afternoon and early evening. Having stood in the hot son all day in huge lines surely motivated everyone to get done, but essentially no grousing was to be heard where I was at that point.

Turnout at the stream I closed was 626 valid votes cast for president from 755 registered voters. So over 80%. The boxes were jammed full of ballots but the system worked. Totals for president were Odinga 433, Kenyatta 170, Mudavadi 8, Kenneth 7 and the rest less. Dida was the only presidential candidate in that stream to get 0.

Will post “snaps” soon.

More impressions from observing voting in Nairobi

Posted on by
1

One big challenge is slowness of process–certainly no surprise at all which is why my civil society colleagues asked that the contingency plans for this be announced ahead of time by the IEBC (electoral commission). Poll openings at 8-10am appear common in Nairobi rather than scheduled 6am–again no surprise given the logistics involved. It certainly appears that in most cases a paper rather than electronic poll book is in use. Further it appears that complete absence of working electronic BVR for voter identification is common. Some polling streams never received hardware at all; others received too little or found it unusable for whatever reason.

Wholly manual voting then is normal, even though the voter registration was truncated to provide for the use of BVR. Given that the voting is inevitably slow and the turnout is huge, I heard from one fellow observer of polling station workers just taking down names of people who presented IDs and allowing them to vote because it would take too long to try to find and check off names on the paper lists.

The voters are being in general extremely patient with hours of pre-dawn queuing and waiting in hot sun. Ordinary Kenyans in Nairobi certainly are demonstrating both peace and a commitment to the voting process itself.

The unexpected problem, to me and people I have spoken with, is that the ballot boxes were getting close to full with only a relatively small percentage of voters having voted. Presiding officers indicated no backup capacity, but were shaking the boxes to settle the cast ballots..

First impressions–front and back

Posted on by
1

I covered the opening of a Nairobi polling centre this morning.

Loose general impressions in comparison with 2007: pre-opening lines seemed even bigger than 2007; large numbers of people got out to que in the pre-dawn; actual voting quite slow as should be expected with new and complicated process and six ballots versus three. There was some stream of periodic boisterousness from people waiting and concerned by bottlenecks–things were quiter in 2007.

One thing that annoyed me was to see that the ballot papers are all white paper except for the color on the front only to correspond with the specific race (i.e. “purple” for woman’s representative to National Assembly). This means when you fold the six ballots for secrecy and to drop them in the color-coded box they look the same. My civil society colleagues raised this issue, among many, with the IEBC. The IEBC reported to one member of the civil society coalition who then circulated the response, that the cheaper ballot papers colored only on one side were only for the “mock election” testing, and that today, voters would have the intended fully colored paper.

Apparently not so. Not that the problem in itself is of such magnitude perhaps, but the quality of the information and means of communication from the IEBC were lacking on this point. And of course it would be good to know, even though it will be too late, what happened in the procurement process to cause this.

Enjoyed meeting diplomatic observers from the Danish Embassy and the Eritrean Foreign Ministry.

“A Road Still Under Construction”–my piece in the Weekend Star

Posted on by
Reply

The Weekend Star: “A Road Still Under Construction”

Back to Nairobi (updated)

Posted on by
2

IMG_7525Now that I am back in Nairobi for the election, I am frantically learning as much as I can “on the ground”, but would love to hear from you. Feel free to drop me an e-mail. Asante.

I have had a lot to say here about Kenyan politics over the past three and a half years, so if you are new to the blog enjoy, but I am here to help quietly and listen for the most part so don’t expect a lot of commentary in this forum prior to the vote. It is interesting to hear so many people who know more than I do have strongly held contradictory opinions and expectations. I have no expectations, just hopes and prayers. Other than that, I will say that I think that fear is unhelpful but complacency is a killer. I am not persuaded by anyone who claims much certainty regarding how things will go.

[Updated] International Crisis Group releases key up-to-date guide to Kenyan election preparations

Posted on by
Reply

Toi Market-Nairobi

Update– the Associate Press reports “Analysts: Political Party Polls in Kenya a Failure”:

Political party primaries to select candidates for Kenya’s March national elections have been fraught with irregularities, disorganization and disgruntled losers, increasing the chances of conflict during the upcoming vote, analysts said Friday.

That’s bad news for those trying to avoid a repeat of what happened after Kenya’s 2007 elections, when a dispute over who won the presidency led to weeks of violence that left more than 1,000 people dead. The primary voting this week did little to instill confidence that officials are ready for another national vote.

.  .  .  .

Kennedy Masine, an official of the local Election Observer Group, described Thursday’s attempt to hold nominations as a “phenomenal failure.” . . .]

I’ve now finished an initial reading of the ICG report released yesterday entitled “Kenya’s 2013 Elections.”  It’s an important resource for two key reasons: 1) it is strikingly up to date for this kind of thing, with lots of new information, including footnote references for events even this week; 2) it is relatively comprehensive, covering a lot of ground in substantial detail.  It gives fair, sober assessment of the status of the major areas of reforms that were identified as needed in the wake of the disaster in 2007-08.  I hope it will be updated quickly once things shake out further with the primaries over the next few days.

In fact, you could take this report and prepare a “grade card” for implementation of the “reform agenda” over the course of the Government of National Unity.  Without being cynical or fatalistic, it would simply have to be quite low so far.  Regardless, by gathering a lot of the information that a lot of us have been thinking about in various areas in one place, the report could also be used as a road map to realistically “play to strengths” in the terms of the existing Kenyan institutions and develop last minute contingency plans and “gap fillers” in those areas where reforms and preparation are clearly going to be getting an “incomplete”, such as policing.  Surely it is clear by now that there need to be plans in place for how to provide extraneous security support beyond the Kenya Police Service in the event of a crisis triggered by major failure of the election itself.

Here is the Executive Summary with a list of recommendations.

An interesting point of reference is the NDI Kenya Pre-Election Mission of May 2012, to see what has been accomplished and not accomplished in the meantime.

Related articles

Fiasco

Posted on by
4

“If how we did nominations is how we shall hold elections, God save Kenya,” Mituma Mathiu in the Daily Nation:

The political party nominations are a complete, utter fiasco, and they tell us a great deal about Kenya’s political culture.

First, and this is what puts the lives of all us in danger, is that politicians are a law unto themselves. . . .