The RESULTS MUST be AUDITED before Declaring Winner-- IEBC

The electoral commission has announced it will audit results of the presidential contest after errors and missed entries were discovered in the official tally.

The decision to audit the results is what delayed the pronouncement of the official presidential results on Friday. Results from each of the 290 constituencies are now to be audited and verified.

Chief Executive Officer of the commission Mr James Oswago told a media briefing that the audit will be conducted before the final tabulation can be used to declare the final election results.

“There may have been errors and discrepancies here and there; some we have already detected and we are working on them,” said Mr Oswago.
The Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) had complained that the commission had failed to include results from 11 constituencies in its final tally.

The constituencies whose results the coalition claimed had been left out of the tabulated results include Kitui South, Kubuachai, Changamwe, Kanduyi, Homa Bay ,Ganze ,Vihiga, Khamisi, Magarini, Kitutu Chache, and Mumias East.

Mr Odinga had garnered 281,611 votes in the 11 constituencies while Mr Kenyatta had garnered 25,863. The results had initially not been captured in the tallying screen.
If included in the final tally Mr Odinga could narrow the gap with his main rival Uhuru Kenyatta.

Cord had earlier written to the IEBC chairman drawing his attention to the anomaly, but attempts to engage him flopped as security officers blocked agents from accessing him.
Mr Oswago said that the commission had set up a team clustered into a group of nine to verify the results before the commission can finally announce the results.

“The most important is to put in place mechanisms where if mistakes occur they can be detected and dealt with,” Mr Oswago said.

Major discrepancies had also been detected after it emerged that the total number of votes cast for each candidate and the rejected votes were more than the votes registered as votes cast.

IEBC chairman Mr Ahmed Issack immediately called a meeting with chief agents of the Presidential candidates to discuss the concerns over tallying and relaying of results.
Agents representing Mr Kenyatta also attended the meeting called by Mr Hassan at Bomas.
“The Presidential agents are free to come to my office any time to discuss any problem with me. This is a transparent process and the results that we have received are credible,” Mr Hassan said.

Said Mr Hassan: “There may have been errors but we will deal with those problems and announce the correct figures when we make the final decision.”