Election chief Wafula Chebukati has pleaded with voters to exercise patience and not to become alarmed because media outlets are broadcasting conflicting results.
After the elections ended more than 45 hours ago, Kenyans still do not know who will be their new president.
Election chief Wafula Chebukati has pleaded with voters to exercise patience and not to become alarmed because media outlets are broadcasting conflicting results.
Based on its own manual entry of information from more than 46,000 voting places, each organization is performing computations.
But it is only the electoral commission that can declare the winner.
The media’s tallies show that the two leading candidates – Raila Odinga and William Ruto – are neck and neck.
“There should be no panic about the differences we are seeing on the media screens. The results are from the same public portal; the approach [of each broadcaster] is different,” Mr Chebukati, the chairperson of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), said.
He said at the end of the tallying the results should look “similar”.
Why is it taking so long?
Teams of journalists from various publications are working laboriously to upload the results that have been received from each polling place individually. Each media outlet chooses the polling places in a different sequence and moves at a different pace.
Regarding the IEBC, in addition to compiling the findings, officials also need to verify each one, which takes time.
Wafula Chebukati, chair of the electoral commission, has pleaded with voters to exercise patience
Officials are currently comparing the results that the commission obtained from the polling places in the form of a photograph with the actual results sheet that is being handed personally to the tallying center in Nairobi, the capital.
This is a crucial factor in the lengthy process and is done to guarantee that the results match.
Additionally, travel to Nairobi, particularly by agents from remote areas, may have slowed down the counting process in certain polling places.
How are Kenyans feeling?
Because contested elections have in the past resulted in violence or the cancellation of the entire process, there is fear throughout the nation.
Following the 2007 election, allegations of a stolen election led to at least 1,200 deaths and 600,000 people fleeing their homes.
The Supreme Court ordered a new presidential election to be held in 2017 after significant logistical mistakes caused the outcome to be thrown out. There is pressure on officials to do things correctly this time.
Election seasons frequently bring the nation to a standstill; business has slowed nationwide, and schools are shuttered at least through next Monday. The normally crowded streets in Nairobi’s core business area are largely desolate.
Election manipulation allegations are as old as the nation itself. The fight for free and fair elections has never wavered even though it was already a feature of politics before multiparty elections were reinstated in the 1990s.
Political parties and activists pushed for the use of technology in place of physically registers, which could be easily manipulated, to authenticate voters after the violence that followed the 2007 election.
The third election to use technology was this year’s, but thus far none of those elections have been free of legal challenges.
However, early assessments indicate that with this election, the electoral commission might have finally accomplished this difficult goal.
When will we learn the outcome?
The local media will probably finish calculating the preliminary results before the end of the day on Thursday if the counting proceeds at the current rate.
Celebrations are likely to start if there is a clear winner of the race.
After analyzing and confirming the results, the electoral commission is the only body that has the authority to name a winner.
After the election day, the electoral commission has seven days to announce the results.
To prevail in the first round of the presidential election, a candidate must:
25% or more of the votes cast in a minimum of 24 counties, or more than half of all votes cast nationwide.
