IEBC: How we will prevent failure on election day

Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Chairman Wafula Chebukati (3rd left) his vice Ms Consolata Nkatha Bucha Maina (2nd left) CEO Ezra Chiloba (left) Commissioners Dr Roselyn K. Akombe (2nd right) with Ms Margaret Wanjala Mwachanya photo:courtesy

The electoral agency has told Kenyans that it will be near-impossible to tamper with its technology in this year’s polls.

According to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), the Kenya Integrated Elections Management System (KIEMS) has been designed to make it almost impossible to fail.

The technology will be deployed to all the 40,833 polling stations to help identify voters electronically, regularly transmit turnout statistics, and capture and transmit election results.

Each polling station will have a KIEMS device with Electronic Voter Identification (EVID) software and will be loaded with the voter’s picture, finger prints, name, sex, and date of birth, and details of the entire final register.

Breaching the system

Voters will be asked to place their fingers on the kit to perform a biometric search.

“If the voter is registered at that particular station, the details will be displayed on the screen. The voter will be verified and allowed to proceed to the next table to be issued with ballot papers,” the commission’s information communication technology manager, Chris Msando, told The Standard.

If the finger print search fails, the verification clerk will do a search by either reading the Machine Readable Zone (MRZ) of the voter’s ID/passport or type in the ID/passport number. This will help in identifying voters who could have lost their biometric details after registering to vote such as those who may have lost their fingers in an accident.

If the records are not found at that polling station, a search will be made against the KIEMS biographic database and the voter redirected to the correct polling station.

Each kit will have only specific voters for the 40,833 polling stations and will be equipped with two unique sim cards that are connected to a Virtual Private Network (VPN) that has been mapped for that area.

In 2013, the kits failed in several parts of the country, some when power went off while others simply went off. However this time round, IEBC says the kits have sufficient power supply with an in-built battery that can support eight hours of usage.

“In addition, each KIEMS device will be deployed with a power bank with a capacity of 16 hours. In total, the power retention will be 24 hours,” Msando added.

 Each of polling station will have two unique Quick Read Access (QRA) codes that will be used to get access to the data in the system.

 In case of failure of any kit, the commission says there will be spare ones that will be placed in strategic places and will be deployed immediately.

To address fears of hacking of the system, the commission says it has put mechanisms in place to guard against such  attempts.

The strategies include transmitting results through private networks within a mobile phone network operator, setting the results servers to accept only the results transmitted using KIEMs systems, and encrypting the results before transmission.

Retain clerks

“The IEBC will deploy at least two backup KIEMS devices in each county ward and also establish two data processing centres in two separate locations for redundancy in case of the failure of one,” Msando says.

The commission is in the process of hiring polling clerks, who will be trained on how to handle the kits. It will also retain the more than 11,000 clerks who were in service during last month’s voter register verification because they are already acquainted with the kits.

The KIEMS, according to IEBC, has the capacity to do alpha numerical search for voters without or with destroyed biometrics and it can also scan the MRZ (Machine Readable Zone) on the ID or passport of voters in order to identify them.

If there is a total failure of the kits on election day, the IEBCsays it has put in place regulations to guide the invoking of manual result transmission through statutory forms from the polling station to the constituency tallying centre.

The Amendment Election Laws (2016) require the electoral body to acquire a system that is simple, accurate, secure, accountable, and transparent.

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