IEBC will not issue regular updates on presidential poll results – Chiloba
IEBC official follows results at the national tallying centre during the March 4, 2013 general election. /FILE
IEBC will relay presidential poll results as declared by constituency returning officers through the media and its website, CEO Ezra Chiloba said on Tuesday.
The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, he said, will provide media houses with a feed from the national tallying centre in Nairobi.
Chiloba, during a meeting with the media stakeholders, said the results which will be relayed electronically are the same that will be declared at the constituencies.
The CEO posited that returning officers will have a final say on the results adding that the commission will not announce any results at the national tallying centre.
This is in line with the High Court ruling which held that what the poll officials at the constituency say will not be changed during the national tallying.
IEBC says it will not be updating periodic results of presidential results but will collate all the 290 constituencies and then declare final results.
“These will be based on physical forms. There will be no variances between the paper data and the electronic data,” Chiloba said.
This means that the commission will not be in a position to control the turn around time within which the final result will have been tallied.
However, the IEBC boss said the period is set to be shorter since returning officers will not have to travel to the national tallying centre in Nairobi to deliver the results.
The results from the specific poll centres will be relayed electronically to the constituency tallying centre, the CEO held adding that the commission has set up 338 tallying centres across the country for the task.
“No periodic updates on results means the results hit the screens as they come. They are updates by the very nature,” the commission said through twitter.
IEBC has also installed an electoral management system which is hailed to be fool-proof hence making it difficult to rig the general election.
Kenyans will on August 8 elect a President, Governors, Senators, Members of Parliament, woman representatives and MCAs.
“We have also put up a system which doesn’t give room for ballot stuffing. The Kenya Integrated Electoral Management System (KIEMS) as designed does not give room for rigging,” Chiloba said.
“We undertake ballot paper reconciliation. The number of ballot papers issued must tally with the reported turnout.”
He added that in the event the biometric voter kits fail, the presiding officer, returning officer and head of ICT will agree on the procedure for resorting to manual voting.
Read: Presidential poll results declared at constituency tallying centre final – court