Groups want election data released

By ALLY JAMAH

Kenya: One full year after the 2013 General Election, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission is facing more pressure to release the results from all the polling stations, rather than just a summary of the final tally.

A report about the disputed and divisive elections by the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) indicates that such information has proved elusive since last year.

KHRC Executive Director Atsango Chesoni said many Kenyans want to know how IEBC arrived at the final tally for the presidential election.

“We don’t understand why IEBC is hiding this critical information because Kenyans have a right to know. People need to know if the numbers actually add up,” she said yesterday while releasing a report titled “The Democratic Paradox” on the elections.

Since last year, a number of players including Civil Society groups have written to IEBC urging it to release all the results and documentation from the polling stations, but IEBC is yet to heed the calls.

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Africa Centre for Open Governance (AfriCOG) Executive Director Gladwell Otieno said that refusal to release the results could mean IEBC has something to hide.

“Electoral results are public information. Article 27 of the IEBC Act reads thus: “The commission shall publish  and publicise all important information within its mandate  affecting the nation,” Ms Otieno said.

She added: ‘Failure to release electoral results immediately following conclusion of the election has raised concerns about discrepancies between figures released for total votes cast, presidential votes cast, and gubernatorial votes.”

Cast doubt

The report indicates that Kenyans cannot rely on the tally of final results provided by IEBC and must be allowed access to the raw data from the polling stations.

During the elections, the votes were tallied at the polling stations before being sent to constituency tallying centres for onward transmission to the national tallying centre.

The electronic transmission failed in most polling stations, forcing IEBC to resort to manual tallying of the votes. Some critics have  previously raised doubts about integrity  of the tallying process and demanded   that counting start afresh using the primary documents from the polling stations.