Kenya is left with a few weeks to go to an election and every political aspirant is devising ways to monitor and verify their votes in all the polling stations in their constituencies or around the country.
V-tally, a new application accessible as a mobile app and from a web browser has launched to allow users to view election results and also manage agents attached to an aspirant. V-tally aims to help aspirants to view results posted by his/her agents and also add agents to the system as long as they have an internet connection.
The developer, Alex Mugo says the aspirant and his agents downloads the application from Android App Store on Google Play and once the aspirant installs the application, he or she will select the option to register as an aspirant and provide his or her details and select his or her candidature details as registered with IEBC. The aspirant will receive an activation code via SMS or email to complete the registration.
After successful registration, the aspirant can now register his or her agents for the respective polling stations within the area he or she is vying. The system will provide an activation code that the agent will input to activate his registration.
“Upon successful registration, the agents will be able to send updates on events that happen within their polling station. The updates will be sent real time to the aspirant on his dashboard. The aspirant can view the updates from his android phone or through the web portal,” said Mugo.
When the results from the polling station are ready, the agent will be able to send results for the aspirant and his or her competitors. The results are relayed automatically and consolidated with results from other stations. The app can relay the number of polling stations within the area one is vying and the number of stations that have submitted results as well as the total number of votes garnered by the aspirant and his performance against his competitors.
Mugo says by using V-tally, an aspirant is able to view events from the polling station and results from a single portal. An agent is able to report events happening at a polling station without having to make calls which can cause disruption in the polling station room and V-tally consolidates the results posted by agents in real time thereby giving the aspirant an up to date position of his performance.
V-tally is also cost effective as opposed to making calls through out to seek updates from the agents recruited by the aspirant and it doesn’t require any extra investment as a basic smart phone is sufficient for both aspirant and the agents. However, Mugo wants the users to know that the results sent through this system only serves as provisional results as final results are only announced by appointed IEBC agents.
