CHEBUKATI UNDER PRESSURE: Here's the process that will lead to announcing Kenya's president

As we approach the close of tallying of Presidential results and submission of all form 34a and 34B, IEBC Chairman Wafula Chabukati has stated that the commission has called all the returning officers to ensure that all forms are at Bomas of Kenya by noon.

He will then validate the forms and announce the President elect thereafter.

This is the process the IEBC has followed:

AT THE CONSTITUENCY TALLYING CENTERS

Receipt of ballot boxes and election materials

Confirmation that form 34A and the polling diary are properly filled

Verification of the figures on the forms for all elective seats

Generation of an excel sheet for all candidates

The Returning Officer announces the results from the polling station.

Once all polling station results are announced, the Returning Officer declares the results for MCA and National Assembly seats.

The Returning Officer then generates a collated forms for Presidential results, senatorial, Woman Representative and Governor seats.

The collated form for Senatorial, woman Representative and Governor seats is sent to the County Tallying centre while that for the presidential results is sent to IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati who is the Returning Officer for the Presidential Election.

AT BOMAS OF KENYA

The forms 34A and 34B come through a Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) to the commission or an alternative email given to returning officers in case the system has a challenge.

Once the file is received, the Returning Officers confirm the contents before printing and authenticating them.

The forms are then given to party agents. Both Jubilee and NASA have about 5 agents each who have been logged into the IEBC system to compare the forms and the texts. The parties can also compare what they have received from their agents.

The forms are referred to IEBC officers to counter-check the results reflected in the forms are accurate. Any error is recorded by the commission because at this stage it cannot amend or correct any figure.

Form 34As are 40,883 in total and they are used to tabulate results of the presidential election. The Presiding Officer fills it after the counting of votes at the polling station. It contains details of votes garnered by each candidate and then details the total number of registered voters in that station, the rejected votes, the objected ones, the disputed and the valid ones.

Form 34Bs are 290 in total and they aggregate the tallies at the constituency level.