What IEBC can learn from student elections at the University of Nairobi

Elections for student leaders at the University of Nairobi just ended with a new team of officials for the association being sworn in for the next one year.

The structure of the Student Council, including the modality for the elections through an electoral college system, is provided for in the Elections Act.

Being a large university, in addition to the Student Council, we also have leaders elected to represent each of the 10 faculties and another three campuses.

These elections provide lessons for countries that are grappling with electoral systems and process reform.

In Kenya, the deployment of technology has always brought with it contestation with complaints about servers and transmission of results.

Technology in that context as opposed to aiding the electoral process becomes just one more arena for contestation amongst the players in an election. This does not have to be so.

Having had the privilege of overseeing this year’s student elections at the University of Nairobi, I found it amazing how technology properly deployed makes elections cheaper, more transparent and more efficient.

The system that the institution uses for its elections is designed by a staff member.

Contrary to the normal tendency of purchasing expensive systems and gadgets, it is possible to look inward as a country and use our local expertise to custom-make technological applications that are both fit for purpose and cost-effective.

Secondly, the verifiability of elections, a constitutional imperative in Kenya, was aided by a well-functioning electronic system.

Throughout the elections systems, it was easy to have accurate statistics on voter turnout, document and store the numbers of those who had voted and thus ensure that there was a trail on the voting process.

The greatest advantage though was speed. Within one second of the close of polling, we were able to have results in all the faculties for the direct voting by the students.

This reduced the tensions around the counting of votes that normally accompanies the national elections.

The efficiency that technology brought was such that within 30 minutes we had finished with the announcement of results and were able to hold debriefing meetings with all the returning officers.

While one may argue that the scale of ours is tiny as compared to a national election, the history of these elections demonstrates that they have had challenges including violence just like those of the country.

Secondly, the resources at the disposal of the institution pale in comparison to those we used for the 2022 General Election, for example. With focus, it is possible to upscale the manner in which we deploy technology in Kenya’s elections and improve on its benefits.

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission may consider crossing the road that separates it from the University of Nairobi and see whether there is something they could learn from our use of an online voting system with a view to reducing the costs and contestations over the country’s elections. We owe ourselves the duty of continuous improvement.