ICT expert pokes holes into IEBC tech system, says it’s not bulletproof
ICT expert has poked holes into the IEBC election technology system saying it may be prone to interference.
Kenya is heading to another general election on Tuesday the 9th of August, 2022.
The voting process is always held peacefully around the county.
However, it is during the transmission, and tallying of the results as announced at the polling station when the problem arises.
The Independent electoral commission has maintained that it is ready to preside over fair and credible elections.
In doing so, they have sought the service of an international company, Smartmatic which will help in the technological integration of the election.
However, Many questions have been asked about the company with its past experience in elections in Uganda, the Philippines, Venezuela, and the USA.
Critics and analysts in Kenya have questioned the firm’s ability in offering a bulletproof system that cannot be compromised.
An ICT expert, Mark Obar Asuelaa in an interview with a local media said IEBC preparations have always been in question.
“Now as always, the electoral and boundaries commission IEBC tends to claim that everything is right at the very beginning, but as you can see from the reports that we have seen and also the admission from the commission itself, there are certain things that you get right. It appears the commission was already committing illegality from the onset. For example, IEBC printed more booklets specifically forms 31A, and yet each polling station only needed one. So people have to ask questions like, why are they printing more booklet? What is the intention? Then so many issues around it that they are trying to work out,” said Obar.
After the 2017 election was nullified, the IEBC opted to seek the services of Smartmatic SGO Group which is a multinational company that builds and implements electronic voting systems. They are going to help in terms of providing the best service for them and even handling the election technology.
Smartmatic has majorly been tasked with providing election technological hardware like fingerprint scanners and other components, but not the software handling the polls. Obar sees this as a shortcoming in terms of result transmission and can affect the election outcome.
“Now, it is very hard to tell whether they will succeed or not. However, most likely they will fail especially on the transmission. They are dealing with the technology to which the provider of the physical technology in terms of hardware is a new person but previously they had worked with a French OT-Morpho, which also developed its own software.
Therefore, their software runs on the provisions of an older supplier while the new supplier has just provided a new technology in terms of physical infrastructure like fingerprint scanners,” Obar said.
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