Transmission major headache for IEBC as it plans to announce only final results

The electoral agency will collate and declare presidential results after receiving scanned form 34B from all returning officers.

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) said yesterday that the computation will be done after the results are transmitted from the constituencies.

IEBC CEO Ezra Chiloba said the commission does not require returning officers to travel immediately to Nairobi, but they will be required to later hand over the forms for record-keeping in case disputes arise.

Mr Chiloba said that unlike in the past, the IEBC chairman will not announce the results of the presidential election periodically as they come but will collate the figures from all the 290 constituencies and declare the final results.

Court of Appeal ruling

"Our understanding of the Court of Appeal ruling is that the commission will only compute all the results and confirm if the winner has achieved 50 plus one and also 25 per cent in at least 24 counties and then declare the final results," Chiloba said.

He was speaking last evening at Bomas of Kenya.

The electoral agency has announced that it will on Monday conduct a nationwide dry run to test its electronic result transmission system.

The test will see simulation results transmitted from polling stations to the National Tallying Centre at Bomas of Kenya, an exercise that will be witnessed by the public.

The agency has engaged three network providers to ensure that the system works without any hitch on August 8.

In 2013, the system transmitted results from only 17,000 of the 33,000 polling stations.

IEBC Commissioner Roselyne Akombe told The Standard yesterday in an interview that everything would be done to ensure that results transmission is smooth. [Geoffrey Mosoku and Moses Nyamori]