Focus is now shifting to the national tallying centre where tallying is currently underway and in which the winner of the presidential contest must secure more than 50% of the vote to avoid a runoff tentatively scheduled for next month.
In order to ensure the credibility of the electoral process and to protect the integrity of the vote, the IEBC set in place a raft of measures some of which have covered the following areas:
Election monitoring groups
A consortium of local election monitoring groups as well as observer missions from the East African Community, the African Union, the European Union, the United Nations and many individual countries from around the world were invited to join the electoral process.
To help ensure a legitimate vote, the IEBC accredited 22,600 election observers, about 10% of whom were international.
Sensitization of party agents
For the first time, the political parties’ chief agents were specially trained by the IEBC on the pre-polling, polling and post-polling activities to ensure their effective participation in the electoral process.
Polling
A high voter turnout was recorded in almost all polling stations.
Peaceful and orderly conduct of polling in all polling stations.
IEBC officials professionally managed most polling stations. All polling stations were clearly marked and demarcated and easily accessible by voters, agents and observers.
Voters were peaceful and waited patiently in the queues for their turn to vote.
The IEBC supplied transparent ballot boxes for voting, a clear departure from the black boxes used in the 2007 general elections.
Challenges included technological failure of the electronic voter identification machines prompting election officials to revert to manual voter registers.
There was confusion in some polling stations resulting from splitting of voter registers based on alphabetical order.
Counting at polling stations
Counting of votes was conducted in all polling stations in accordance with the law.
Results were recorded in statutory forms, signed by agents and posted conspicuously at the polling stations.
IEBC provided tamper proof envelopes for storage of crucial forms and polling materials.
Electronic transmission of results
IEBC provided all presiding officers with mobile phones specially configured to transmit election results.
The phones were programmed to transmit election outcome in a preferential order beginning with the presidential results.
While counting and tallying for most polling stations were made within reasonable time, transmission of results proved a major challenge.
Network congestion caused inordinate delays in the electronic transmission of results.
Failure by the IEBC to communicate these technical glitches caused unnecessary public anxiety.
National tallying
The IEBC has invited political party agents, observers and the media to witness the ongoing national tallying.
Following suspicions and disputations that accompanied the national tallying of the 2007 presidential elections, political parties will be seeking to ensure that the results announced and released by the returning officers at the constituency level are the same forwarded to the national tally.