- Chebukati said that the IEBC leveraged technological improvements to deliver an unimpeachable election.
- He noted that the form images were captured in encrypted PDF formats.
Image: FILE
Former IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati has explained how the electoral agency ensured the August 2022 general elections were free and fair.
In a video seen by the Star, Chebukati said that the IEBC leveraged technological improvements to deliver an unimpeachable election.
He said lessons from previous elections in 2013 and 2017 helped the Commission plan better for the 2022 elections.
"We said we were not going to transmit the text message of the results from the polling station because when the result forms come there is always a problem between the text and the forms and this creates room for misinformation and disinformation," Chebukati said.
"So we said we shall only transmit the image of the forms. The presiding officer completes forms 34A with agents, they sign, scan the form on Kiems Kit and transmit it to the national and constituency tallying centres and the public portal."
He noted that the form images were captured in encrypted PDF formats.
Chebukati added that the forms had QR codes for each polling station and only presiding officers had rights to them.
"We created a 15-digit QR code for each polling station and gave the rights to the specific station the presiding officers so that they can be biometrically identified before scanning and sending the image. It was not easy to get any other form uploaded and every form could be traced to their specific polling stations," he said.
The former IEBC chairman has been giving updates on what transpired in last year's presidential elections through a project by the Electoral Integrity Project for their Annual Electoral Integrity Conference.
His project is dubbed 'The Role of Technology in Improving the Integrity of the Electoral Process in Kenya'.
In May, when the former Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission chair announced that he had been picked for the project, he said he would use the time to demystify the "server issue" which the Kenyan opposition had intensified calls to have opened.
"I am pleased to announce that my project titled "Role of Technology in Improving the Integrity of the Electoral Process in Kenya" has been accepted for presentation at Electoral Integrity's Annual Conference to be held on July 3-7! My talk will demystify "the server" in Kenyan polls," he said.