- There must be a justifiable reason for doing away with technology
- There are always two camps in this issue: one for manual elections and the other against
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The history of elections technology in Kenya traces back to 2008, when we had the election crisis that led to the setting up of the Kriegler Commission.
We looked at how best to improve efficiency and effectiveness of elections management and one of the recommendations was through the use of technology.
Since then, the country has put in place various mechanisms. During the 2010 referendum we had a kind of pilot project that comprised biometric registration of voters and electronic transmission of results.
Based on that experience, we went for biometric registration of voters for the 2013 election.
In 2017, we went further and expanded the scope of technology. Through a legal requirement, the commission was mandated to put in place an integrated electronic election management system and that is the background of KIEMS.
Basically it was an integrated technology able to attend to various aspects of electoral management: biometric registration, identification of voters and results transmission.
There is great value in having elections that are supported by technology because you will get a more efficient and superior register.
There must be a justifiable reason for doing away with technology. There are always two camps in this issue: one for manual elections and the other against.
There are some parts of election management that gain value with technology while others benefit from a manual backup.
We cannot fully rely on technology when it comes to results mechanism; we need a fallback manual system.
The best way forward is to identify critical points that need the support of technology and enhance those, and set up a fallback mechanism.
On the issue of 2022 the question would be, what does the law require of us now? There is a bit of a gap in the framework supporting the use of technology in results transmission.
Parliament made certain changes that supported the use of a manual system as a backup, but Katiba Institute went to court, which declared the provisions unconstitutional.
When a court declares a provision of law unconstitutional and Parliament has already changed those provisions, what becomes the law in operation?
That has not been addressed.
The former IEBC CEO spoke to the Star