Chebukati: We’ll start posting results after verifying forms 34A
IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati who has said that the commission will only start posting results of the presidential election from various polling stations in the country once it has verified the forms 34A as transmitted by the presiding officers.
The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) will only start posting results of the presidential election from various polling stations in the country once it has verified the forms 34A as transmitted by the presiding officers.
IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati made the announcement Tuesday evening as he said that the commission expects the constituency returning officers (CROs) to deliver forms 34A physically at the Bomas of Kenya, the national tallying centre, from Wednesday morning to pave the way for the verification process.
The IEBC boss also noted that areas of Kakamega, Nairobi, Makueni and Isiolo where voting was delayed due to logistical and other issues were allowed more time to finalise the various processes before transmitting forms 34As to the national tallying centre.
“Once the CROs have brought the form 34As, we shall start the verification process and update Kenyans on what is happening,” said Mr Chebukati when spoke at the Bomas of Kenya’s auditorium.
Posted on IEBC’s live portal
By the time Mr Chebukati was making the announcement, forms 34As from 32,065 of the 46,229 polling stations across the country had already been posted on the IEBC’s live portal.
However, the commission cannot rely on the delivered forms to begin tallying the provisional results of the presidential election until they have been verified in the presence of the CROs.
Mr Chebukati also noted that the results transmission system, which is part of the Kenya Integrated Election Management System (Kiems) used as a primary voter identification in the voting process, has been configured to send results to the national tallying centre only once.
“The kits cannot send results twice and the results announced at the polling stations are final and cannot be altered by anyone,” the IEBC chairman said.
The law mandates the presiding officers to enter the presidential election results in forms 34As, take an image of the form that is duly signed, send it to the national tallying centre and deliver the form physically to the constituency returning officer.
Once this has been executed successfully, the CRO is then required to aggregate the results as entered in the forms 34A into form 34B and then physically deliver the two forms to the national tallying centre.
Marching image and Form 34A
Verification of the results entails marching the image of Form 34A as transmitted by the presiding officer and the physically delivered Form 34B by the CRO before tallying the results.
Once this has been achieved, the commission chairman, who is the presidential election returning officer, is required to create Form 34C where all the results of the other presidential candidates will be entered, announced and then declare the winner.
The winner is then issued with a certificate, which is Form 34D.
The constitution provides that one can only be declared the winner in a presidential election if the candidate has scored at least 25 per cent in the majority of the 47 counties.
An individual is also declared winner in a presidential election if he or she scores 50 per cent plus one.
Follow the Nation's live coverage of the Kenyan election results here.
