
The IEBC says results will be transmitted from these locations by satellite, and that precautions are in place to avoid any failure. This year, nearly 1,300 polling stations are in areas with little to no internet coverage, an improvement on the last election when 11,000 locations were in the dark.

We don't know with certainty that the system of transmission will work 100 percent," said Mulle Musau from the Elections Observation Group, a Kenyan poll watchdog. When the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) ran a test in June, less than half of the 2,900 polling stations successfully transmitted results.Īnother rehearsal in July, across a reduced number of locations, saw a 92 percent rate, but the outcome didn't inspire confidence. OT-Morpho, the French company that supplied the voting systems, denied any manipulation or hacking had occurred.īut in a landmark ruling, Kenya's highest court, citing irregularities in the transmission of results, invalidated Kenyatta's victory and ordered a fresh vote.Īn observation mission deployed by the European Union to monitor the vote noted an "improved use of technology, but insufficient capacity or security testing". The Odinga camp claimed, again, that technology had been manipulated to favour the incumbent. The opposition, led by Raila Odinga, said it was a deliberate act of sabotage by Uhuru Kenyatta, his presidential rival who won the vote.ĭuring the next election in 2017, the biometric systems worked without a hitch, but problems in delivering the results electronically formed the basis of Odinga's successful legal challenge to Kenyatta's re-election. The fiasco damaged public trust in electoral technology.
#Last stand union city hacked manual
Kenya's first stab at using voting technology in 2013 was not a success - the system broadly failed, forcing the election commission to return to manual methods. The photographs are pooled at a constituency level, then forwarded to a national tally centre, where they are cross-checked against the original forms which are physically transported. To limit the possibility of fraud, the official form displaying the outcome from each polling station will be photographed and transmitted digitally, instead of officials inputting the results manually as was the case in 2017.

Technology comes into play again when polling stations close and votes are counted. On election day, voters provide their fingerprints for identification against a digital database, before casting their ballot in a traditional manner using a pen and paper.
#Last stand union city hacked registration
In the subsequent 20 elections, results were transmitted electronically, and biometrics used to register voters and identify them on polling day.īiometric voter registration has been a success, boosting the electoral roll from 14.3 million in 2013 to 19.6 million in 2017 and 22.1 million in 2022. Here's what to know as Kenya's votes on August 9:Īfter the death of more than 1,100 people in violence after the 2007 election, technology was proposed as a way of bolstering transparency around polls and reducing the delay in announcing results, a major source of tension. Kenya presidential contender Odinga says won't take part in debate
