An official 20-hour scrutiny of results from the presidential election raised red flags on documents from at least 63 constituencies; 30 of which did not have a serial number and another 33 did not have a watermark.
Delays in transmitting scanned results forms electronically after concluding vote counting, together with the absence of original result declaration documents during the scrutiny, has raised suspicions about forgeries and possible alteration of numbers.
Logs from the transmission system show that Form 34B, which captured results for the constituency, appear to have been uploaded onto the server by Constituency Elections Coordinators rather than by returning officers.
A scrutiny of results that led the Supreme Court to cancel Kenya’s presidential election results has opened wide the can of worms that was the country’s August 8, 2017 polls, calling into question some 7.5 million votes.
An official 20-hour scrutiny of results from the presidential election raised red flags on documents from at least 63 constituencies; 30 of which did not have a serial number and another 33 did not have a watermark.
The 30 constituencies that filed results forms without a serial number account for 1,407,746 valid votes, while documents for the 33 constituencies holding 1,850,706 valid votes failed the ultra-violet test because they did not have a watermark. This casts doubt on the authenticity of at least 3.2 million votes.
The scrutiny was overseen by Esther Nyaiyaki, the Registrar of the Supreme Court, and witnessed by representatives of the Jubilee Party of President Uhuru Kenyatta, and the opposition coalition, the National Super Alliance of Raila Odinga.
The court on September 1 annulled the results of the election and declaring of President Kenyatta as the winner with 8.2 million votes and ordered a fresh one in 60 days.
In addition, the chairman of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, Wafula Chebukati, has written a letter demanding answers from IEBC chief executive officer Ezra Chiloba on why 10,366 election computer kits failed to transmit results for some 4,366,556 votes. He also asks why some 595 polling stations did not send any results through the Kenya Integrated Elections Management System, the platform for results transmission.
Ballot papers
Mr Chebukati has also pointedly sought to know how an email account was created in his name and used to access the results transmission system 9,934 times.
Printing of ballot papers was a hotly contested dispute that was ferociously and repeatedly litigated by the coalition led by one of the candidates in the election, Mr Raila Odinga.
The $25 million printing contract for election materials, awarded to Dubai-based Al Ghurair Printing and Publishing Company, had been twice cancelled by the High Court for breach of procurement procedures, but was awarded after the Court of Appeal decided that there was little time left to competitively find another bidder.
The official results document, Form 34C, used to declare President Uhuru Kenyatta re-elected nationally, did not have security features, such as a watermark, and did not bear a serial number.
Judges ordered the scrutiny, under the supervision of the Supreme Court’s registrar, after lawyers for Nasa presidential candidate Raila Odinga alleged massive forgeries.
The judges also appointed three information communication technology experts, shadowed by President Kenyatta and Mr Odinga’s representatives, to check who had logged into the results transmission system but were denied access.
Between Monday, August 28, at 6.30pm and Tuesday, August 29 at 2pm, examiners scrutinised 41,451 election results documents from the Ceremonial Hall at Milimani Court in Nairobi after the Kenyatta International Convention Centre, which had been reserved by the Supreme Court, declined to host the exercise citing overbooking.
Delays in transmitting scanned results forms electronically after concluding vote counting, together with the absence of original result declaration documents during the scrutiny, has raised suspicions about forgeries and possible alteration of numbers.
IEBC officials admitted that they were scanning Forms 34A and 34B at the national tallying centre after the presidential election results had been announced on August 11.
Examiners found the near uniform use of carbon and Photostat copies instead of original documents from a sample of 4,120 polling station results forms from five counties, including Tharaka Nithi, Mandera, Kisii, Bungoma and Nairobi.
Gazetted polling stations
A court official who participated in the results scrutiny told The EastAfrican on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals that the IEBC presented 41,451 forms 34A for constituency results, 568 higher than the number of gazetted polling stations.
Another audit into results transmission system ran into a wall of resistance as the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission failed to comply with five of the 15 specific orders issued by the Supreme Court for its appointed experts to check if the results transmission system had been hacked; and whether or not computer logs corroborated the results announced showing that President Kenyatta had been re-elected.
Presiding officers were expected to electronically transmit scans of presidential election results, on Form 34A, from the country’s 40,883 polling stations to the national tallying centre as soon as they concluded counting but appear not to have done so. These would, in turn, be collated into Form 34B at the constituency.
“There is no trace of data originating from any polling station. This raises questions whether data on the server came from the polling station,” says Ms Julie Soweto for the National Super Alliance who shadowed the court-appointed ICT team.
She and a posse of lawyers had stormed into the Milimani Court still dressed in their robes because they had been informed that the scrutiny had stalled because of intransigence tactics employed by President Kenyatta’s Jubilee Party and the IEBC.
Logs from the transmission system show that Form 34B, which captured results for the constituency, appear to have been uploaded onto the server by Constituency Elections Coordinators rather than by returning officers.
The report also identified weaknesses in the results transmission system, including 9,934 successful login attempts by Mr Chebukati’s account to delete, upload and change results.
