In the midst of the ongoing Kenya general elections, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) has announced that there were around 200 attempts made to breach the system between Thursday, 4:00 pm and Friday, 8:00 am.
This was affirmed by an insider that reported on the happenings on Friday.
However, IEBC has given the Kenyan people its word that the information technology system they use to transmit election results is secure.
“Nothing has happened. We anticipated that there would be people who would try to hack, but we are monitoring the systems and all are safe, “he said.
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Kenyan Election Hacking Attempts
According to The Star, a representative of one of the major parties made an effort to get into the system when they were at the National Tallying Centre in Bomas. In the latter part of the same day, officers from the IEBC prevented a person who was suspected of being a party agent from seizing and fleeing with an IEBC device.
Nation Africa also said that two different media organizations had their systems hacked, with one having their data tampered with and the other having their systems attacked.
On Friday, false information was spread that the systems had been hacked.
While speaking to the media at the Bomas, CEO Hussein Marjan said they had taken precautions to secure the safety of the results forms and the data created from them.
Marjan was responding to rumours that some people had tried to break into the system to put in an algorithm that would change the results.
“Nothing like that has happened. We anticipated people would try to infiltrate the system and put safeguards in place. They know people are not sleeping; they want to ensure our systems are down,” he said.
“We assure the whole country that our systems are secure.” If in doubt, talk to us to scale up the security mechanism. “
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Election Vote Counting Procedure
The Independent Electoral Boundaries Commission (IEBC) gave media groups and civil society organizations permission earlier this year to set up a competing counting centre. This centre will collect and tabulate the results of the elections that will take place in August.
According to Wafula Chebukati, the Chairperson of the IEBC, the decision was made to increase the election’s transparency.
“The media houses, political parties and candidates are free to have their own parallel tally,” he said after meeting media stakeholders in Nairobi.
Still, Chebukati said again that the law says that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) will be the one to announce the winner of the close election.
“You can count the results, but, of course, do not declare them.” “That one you leave to me,” he said.
The Nation reports that it took IEBC a long time to be ready for the count, which sparked various allegations and criticisms.
There are a lot of other news organizations that are experiencing delayed tally as well, since they do not have the manpower to keep up with the pace that the IEBC is working at.
People have remarked that the slow pace of tally was because of a lack of capacity due to poor planning and unpreparedness or an inability to manage what are essentially rudimentary processes.
Observations
The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) is supposed to announce the official results of Kenya’s presidential elections tomorrow, August 16. This is how the rules for Kenyan elections work. While the IEBC is tallying the votes, it’s possible that quarrels may be going on at Bomas until then. After many loud fights between opposition parties caused delays and raised suspicions of cheating at the counting centre, IEBC commissioner Abdi Guliye told politicians and anyone else who didn’t have a remarkable job to leave the centre.