Former Cabinet Secretary Moses Kuria has proposed a dual tallying system that would allow Kenyans to track verified and unverified presidential election results.
In a post on his official X platform, Kuria said all presidential results should be livestreamed as hard-copy Forms 34 are received and verified at the National Tallying Centre.
He, however, said livestreaming alone would not be sufficient to enhance transparency in the tallying process.
Instead, he proposed that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) maintain a separate national tally based on electronic results received from constituency returning officers.
“We need all results livestreamed as the hard copy Form 34s get verified at the National Tallying Centre,” the former CS stated.
Under the proposal, the IEBC would simultaneously update a public portal with an unverified national tally as it receives individual presidential results from constituency returning officers.
Each constituency would therefore have two presidential tallies: one based on electronic results and another based on hard-copy Forms 34 verified at the national tallying centre.
“So we will have two tallies for Presidential results per constituency - Verified and Unverified,” Kuria said.
He explained that the verified tally would be based on physical election forms, while the unverified tally would be generated from electronic results transmitted from constituencies.
Kuria said the parallel system would allow Kenyans and election observers to compare the two sets of results and establish whether there were discrepancies between electronically transmitted results and the documents subsequently presented for verification.
He added that the approach could provide a basis for determining whether the national tallying process could eventually be conducted without the prolonged verification exercise at the national tallying centre.
“If there is none in 2027, we run 2032 based purely on electronic forms and save the country that meaningless drama at Bomas. My 2 cents,” Kuria said.
He said his views were informed by his experience observing presidential tallying processes at the national level.
“I was present throughout the tallying process at KICC in 2007 and Bomas of Kenya in 2013, 2017 and 2022,” he said.
“As such, I feel I owe the nation a historical perspective."
His proposal comes amid concerns over accountability in the tallying process, with lawyers, civil society groups and other stakeholders calling for greater transparency.
The debate intensified after Parliament considered amendments to the Elections Act that initially appeared to remove the statutory requirement for the IEBC to livestream election results.
The National Assembly, however, said it had deleted Clause 22 of the Elections (Amendment) Bill, 2024, retaining the existing Section 39 provision requiring the IEBC to establish a mechanism for livestreaming results announced at polling stations.
National Assembly Majority Leader Kimani Ichung’wah has maintained that Parliament did not remove the livestreaming requirement, saying Section 39(1G) of the Elections Act remains in place.
“The streamed results are for public information only and shall not be the basis for declaration by the Commission. That is the law as it is, and it has not changed,” Ichung’wah earlier stated.
The dispute has since moved to court, with advocate John Muremi Njomo filing a petition challenging the changes to the electoral law and questioning the position on live transmission of presidential results.
Justice David Mburu certified the petition as urgent and directed that the case be mentioned on November 2 for further directions.
