French firm rules out transmission of full vote results

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OT-Morpho says the results transmission system (RTS) configured for the fresh presidential poll can only transmit pictures of forms 34A and 34b, raising concern about the transmission of results in areas without the 4G network.
The French firm said the late inclusion of the other six candidates following a court order has limited the capability of its transmission kit.

French digital security firm OT-Morpho says it will only transmit scanned copies of the presidential vote forms and not text results, citing time constraints following the late review of the number of candidates in the Thursday ballot.

The firm said the results transmission system (RTS) configured for the fresh presidential poll can only transmit pictures of forms 34A and 34b, raising concern about the transmission of results in areas without the 4G network.

OT-Morpho said they had initially configured its kits to accommodate two candidates, Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga, adding that its request for the elections to be pushed to October 31, and not Thursday to accommodate the other contestants, was rejected.

The French firm said the late inclusion of the other six candidates following a court order has limited the capability of its transmission kit.

“As a consequence, OT-Morpho informed the IEBC that only part of the capabilities of the RTS system, that is, transmitting the pictures of the 34A and 34B forms and not the text results, will be technically usable at this time, for the reason mentioned above,” said the OT-Morpho in a statement on Monday.

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In the August 8 polls, the transmission equipment was configured to send scanned copies of the forms plus vote tallies — which included candidates’ results and rejected votes in a text form.

This worked well for areas that only had the 2G networks as they could send in vote tallies as they sought alternatives to forward the forms to the national tallying centre in Nairobi.

The High Court on October 11 ordered that the IEBC includes 8 presidential candidates. OT-Morpho say it has already configured its kits when the Judgement was issued based on the September 28 agreement with the IEBC.

The judgment required the French firm to get a new software and configure the transmission kits afresh, a task that argues could not be done within 15 days to October 26 repeat poll date.