My humble take on last year's elections is that the smarter team won. Period. We can then argue long into the night about whether or nor Kenya Kwanza is the better team. We may scream and shout until kingdom come about IEBC's general competence (if they were sitting the KCSE exam, they get a C+; there are definitely systemic challenges in the house, but it's a passing grade).

C+ indicates significant room, and potential, for improvement. It's not about how many times Raila Odinga shouts and William Ruto shouts back. It's about our constitutional quest to create credible and sustainable institutions. And this is why I will repeatedly classify IEBC as an economic risk to this country. Our main trouble is that our politicos prefer not to de-risk it. So we would still have issues if Jesus was IEBC Chair.

Is there a case for a proper independent inquiry into the elections? Let's see. We've had fewer post-elections petitions than ever before. We're not hearing much noise around the "down ballot" voting (governors, senators, MPs, women reps and MCAs). But we set ourselves up by over-complicating the procedure for the presidential vote. National tallying centre. National returning officer. Bomas of Kenya. Public portal. Maybe if we did this for all the voting, and not just the presidential, we have less noise after the fact. But we think episodically, not systematically. And every half-smart Kenyan will tell you any election rigging today happens before the fact.