Friday, March 08, 2013
The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission chairman Isaack Hassan has sought to clear the commission from allegations of malpractice in the ongoing vote tallying process.
Hassan has said that there have been no cases of counted votes being more than registered votes as had been earlier claimed by the Cord coalition’s deputy presidential candidate, Kalonzo Musyoka.
Hassan instead said that the tallied votes are a reflection of how Kenyans cast their votes in the Monday elections. “The results we are releasing are the true verified results that are validated by all involved officers,” he said.
The IEBC chair however revealed that the rejected votes are much lower than initially transmitted. He attributed this to a database error which was multiplying the rejected votes by eight.
Though admitting that the electronic transmission system had failed, Hassan said that the system had not been hacked and thus the results could not be influenced.
He however said that the malfunction of the electronic system is what forced the commission to revert to the manual tallying system. Hassan also said that the commission is not biased and that the commissioners took an oath of office to serve without favour or fear and therefore are impartial. He however said that any commission official caught in any form of malpractice will be held personally responsible.
Source: Nairobi Star