IEBC’s KIEMS kits will only accommodate the names of two presidential candidates, the commission has announced.
In an internal memo by CEO Ezra Chiloba on Saturday, he explained the kits will be reconfigured with the names of President Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga only due to time constraints.
This expressly locks out the other five candidates who made their entry into the race on Wednesday following a High Court ruling allowing Thirdway Alliance Presidential candidate Dr Ekuru Aukot to be in the race.
Following the revision of results transmission workflow by the commission, cites the Star, Transmission Result System (TRS) transmits election results from forms 34A and 34B from polling stations and constituency tallying centres respectively.
However, to accommodate the seven candidates, form 34B excel worksheet will be revised to include all the seven candidates.
“On 11 October the high court ordered the commission to include the name of Ekuru Aukot as candidate in the fresh presidential election to be held on October 26. The court also observed that indeed all candidates that participated in the August 8 presidential election were entitled to participate as candidates. Accordingly the commission has now gazetted seven candidates for the fresh presidential election. The commission has however resolved that the RTS will not be configured to accommodate new presidential candidates except for the original two owing to time constraints,” read part of the memo.
Alliance for Real Change Presidential candidate Abduba Dida, independent candidates Joe Nyaga, Japeth Kaluyu, Joseph Kavinga and Michael Wainaina will be on the ballot.
Texts results sent through the KIEMS kits will not be considered since they are configured to relay results of two candidates only where as they are seven in total.
“In other words, the RTS text results which are provisional that would be automatically collated and displayed on the screen or website shall not be availed. The commission is however considering alternative form of display.”
He added presiding officers at the polling centres will be trained to ensure that the text information against the two candidates is typed as zero in all data fields.
The commission is also exploring ways in which the media can be let in the tallying centres across the country in a move towards making the process transparent.