Poll results transmission will be done by satellite in areas without 3G or 4G coverage.
Kenyans will soon get the opportunity to choose the politicians who will represent them for the ensuing five years in elections. Many different things may go wrong during the elections. Since the voting will include the use of technological tools, the majority of which neither the average voter in Kenya nor the candidates are familiar with, the majority of these worries are technical in nature.
In order to do this, Raila Odinga, who is running for president for the fifth time, seeks some guarantees from the IEBC. The Standard has subsequently published a list of his inquiries, which we were able to preview. All of these have also been addressed by the IEBC, and we are repeating their responses for your information.
The challenges
Raila is curious as to whether information transfer, including the results of the election, will be tamper-proof. The candidate for president is also interested in learning if voting places will have actual vote registers.
Raila also wants to know if the IEBC has a different method for disseminating results in locations without 3G or 4G service (note that Safaricom’s 4G coverage in the nation is at 97 percent). Additionally, the 40,883 voting locations in 2017 received KEIMS tablet SIM cards via Safaricom.
Not just that: If the IEB improperly assigned positions to Smartmatic BV Holdings, Raila wants to know about it.
For those who are curious, the business developed and provides electronic voting services and technology that are intended to make elections “more auditable and transparent.”
The candidate for Azimio La Umoja also wants to hear what the Commission has done to address issues with technical capability.
IEBC Responses
The national counting centre and constituency tallying centre would receive results electronically from polling places through a secure network, according to the IEBC.
The IEBC claims that this time around since all voters will be recognized electronically, there won’t be any hard copies of the voter register available at polling places. The Commission will provide satellite modems for the experiment in order to transmit findings from regions that are not covered by 3G or 4G networks. The deployment of the modems to 1111 centres, according to IEBC, would rely on whether the Commission has enough funding to do so.
Since telcos are still being taken into consideration, the IEBC has not chosen a carrier that is most suited for results transmission. However, based on location and coverage, we predict that either Safaricom, Safaricom and Airtel, or Safaricom, Telkom, and Airtel would be chosen.
It should be recalled that the IEBC oversaw the ICT/KIEMS (Kenya Integrated Election Management System) system during the most recent elections. Oberthur Technologies (OT) and Safran Identity & Security (Morpho), who have in-depth understanding of biometrics, authentication, digital security, as well as video and data analytics, have implemented the system.
Additionally, NASA, the party Raila had competed against at the time, claimed that the French company had been improperly chosen to supply the KIEMs kits based on allegations of bribery. In accordance with international rules, the IEBC had said that it will employ cloud servers and a backup platform. In addition, OT-Morpho/Safran said that it will test the technology ahead of the 2017 re-elections.
These are a few of the reasons Raila is curious about whether Smartmatic has been improperly assigned various jobs that were previously maintained by OT Morpho (2017). (2022). The IEBC’s response is that it merely exchanged technical specifications with Smartmatic and that Smartmatic has subsequently received OT Moprho’s biometric voter registration (BVR) data.
