A vote recount in the select polling stations as ordered by the Supreme Court is set to be concluded on Thursday, September 1 with a few ballot boxes having been scrutinized. To this point, however, a few anomalies have been noted in 9 of the 45 ballot boxes being scrutinized.
The boxes were from Mvita Constituency, Mombasa County in Majengo and Mvita primary schools polling stations.
Some of the issues that emerged included failure to fill Forms 34A, failure to seal rejected ballot papers and missing of voters’ physical register, and lack of stamps. The other notable errors were that in Majengo polling station, Stream 1 had no Form 34A. At the same polling station, in Stream 2 Form 34A was blank and had not been stamped.
Ballot boxes arriving for the recount
In Mvita Primary School, Stream 5, the ballot box scrutinized had two Forms 34A and it doesn’t end there. It was found that some Form 34As were signed by the presiding officer, the deputy presiding officer, and agents of political parties but other Form 34A were not signed.
The exercise was under tight security with the Registrar of the Supreme Court, Letizia Wachira together with her staff overseeing the whole process.
Before the start of the recount on August 29, Deputy Chief Justice Philomena Mwilu had directed the Deputy Inspector General of Police Noor Gabow to provide adequate security during the recounting exercise.
The retallying exercise at Forodha House
“We direct the Inspector General of Police in liaison with the Registrar of this Court to provide adequate security during the exercise of scrutiny,” Mwilu directed.
The team that was tasked with recount has limited time to present final report to the 7-bench judge with September 1 being the final day.
Standoff over access to servers ordered by Supreme Court
Uncertainty has ensued on whether the Independence Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) has facilitated the access of eight servers as ordered by the Supreme Court on Tuesday, August 30.
On the second day of the presidential election petition hearing, Lawyer Philip Murgor, who is representing Raila Odinga and Martha Karua told the court that IEBC is yet to give them full access to the servers.
“I wish to report that as of this morning nothing has changed, IEBC continues to refuse to provide the forensic image of all the 8 servers. Of those 8 servers, IEBC are providing only limited access to server number 5,” the Senior Counsel said.
However, Justice Isaac Lenaola said that the court had received a contrary report, saying that IEBC had complied with the court order.
“We received a full report from our technical team that was leading the exercise at IEBC and have been informed that the process of compliance was completed last night. As far as our team is concerned, the process at IEBC is finished,” he said.
Lenaola added that the unattended questions surrounding the order issued by the Supreme Court will be handled amid the hearing process on Thursday.
“You can address the question of non-compliance, what servers you think were not accessed, the information that you received, your agents were there,” he said.
On Wednesday, a similar standoff was witnessed at IEBC headquarters when the commission’s officials refused to give access to its servers as per the Supreme Court directive.
Senior Counsel Philip Murgor at the Supreme Court
“We have been given restricted access only to the result transmission system, and it has not been granted yet, to only one server. It is established that the IEBC has eight servers,” Orengo said.
In a contradictory report on Wednesday evening, IEBC said it has granted the parties access to the servers.
“Following the Supreme Court order, IEBC has granted access to the parties to access the servers and the scrutiny exercise is ongoing,” read a statement from the commission.
