IEBC’s new plan to block dead voters and fraud

A secret plan to detect rigging during August 8 polls can be revealed.

The Independent Electoral and Boundary Commission (IEBC) will dispatch a special electronic kit to each of the 41,000 polling stations to automatically flag the slightest irregularity during the polls.

IEBC will start demonstrating to the public how the kit works today as the 30-day voter register verification process begins.

The electronic tablet is loaded with details of registered voters of each station only.

On the polling day, each of the 41,000 kits will simultaneously, at intervals of three hours, from the time voting begins at 6am, relay to the national tallying centre the number of those who have voted and compute the tally at the close of voting.

The technology is designed to make it hard for politicians to rig the elections at the polling station level by automatically rejecting  any ineligible entries.

It is designed to prevent inflation of vote figures by ensuring that the results forwarded by elections officials reflect the figures generated at close of v oting.

The system, called the Kenya Integrated Election management System (KIEMS) seeks to seal loopholes that have provided room for manipulation of past elections results.

The kits, supplied by a French company, Safran Security and Index, will have names of all candidates in a particular area. Each kit will only have data of registered voters of a particular polling centre.

The system has been modified and synchronised to incorporate components for voter identification, voter tallying and  result transmission.

Automatic record

This means that on election day, each voter at the polling station whose details have been crosschecked and confirmed before receiving ballot papers will automatically be recorded.

This means, no person can vote more than once whether in that polling station or any other in the county.

At the close of voting, the system then tabulates number of people who voted; which has to tally with the results being transmitted to the constituency, county or national tallying centre.

If the figure is higher than votes cast or number of registered voters, the system automatically rejects them.

All the clerks will be trained on handling the tablet and will be given extra batteries and backup power-bank to ensure the kit does not go off.

“This will ensure that anyone who is not registered will not vote. It will also ensure that no dead voters, whose names might still be in the register vote will vote. An additional element is that once one votes, the name is blocked by the technology to ensure that nobody votes more than once,” explains Roselyn Akombe, an IEBC Commissioner.

She assured Kenyans that the commission was putting in place a backup to ensure that the voting process proceeds smoothly till normal system is restored in case of a technology failure.

IEBC has trained 21,000 poll workers on KIEMS gadgets.

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