ANALYSIS: The Kenyan election

The place of technology

The Kriegler report recommended a number of technological fixes to address some of the vulnerabilities inherent in the manual process. These included biometric voter registration, electronic voter identification and a results transmission system.

By 2016, the 2011 Elections Act had been revised to anchor the electronic systems in law.

Kenya now has some of the most advanced election technology in place. This includes a biometric voter registration process which involves capturing biological features such as the fingerprints of prospective voters. This means that at the end of voter registration the election body can electronically audit the records, picking out and deleting duplicates.

Biometric features captured during voter registration are also used on election day to ensure that those voting are indeed those who registered.

This process is known as electronic voter identification and requires that a voter presents their biometrics for validation prior to voting. Voter identification eliminates the ‘ghost-voter’ problem as the electronic voter identification equipment keeps a tally of the registered voters who actually turn up to vote.

It also eliminates the threat of vote manipulation by requiring voters to impress their fingerprints on specialised equipment which highlights inconsistencies between the electronic and manual tallies.

The final piece of technology recommended by Kriegler – the results transmission system – ensures that voting numbers from polling stations are not changed before they reach the tallying centres.

To avoid changes in the figures approved at the polling station, the presiding officer at each station is expected to transmit the numbers electronically through a secure mobile phone.

As such, the numbers are counted electronically in real-time as they stream into the tallying centres.

The results transmission system has the added advantage of preventing fraudsters from delaying the announcement of results so as to fiddle with the numbers to meet the magical 50%+1 threshold.

The way forward

The introduction of these technologies means that Kenya is now in a position to minimise election fraud and to guarantee a credible electoral process.

But concerns remain, particularly around the contentious amendment to allow for a ‘complimentary’ voting system to be put in place in the event of technology failure.

Will Kenya’s 2017 election process revert to pre-2007 status? Only time will tell whether Kenya has indeed become a mature democratic state or whether it will join the league of failed states.

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— The Independent (@UGIndependent) May 16, 2017

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John Walubengo is a lecturer, Faculty of Computing & IT, Multimedia University of Kenya