[kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013

[S.M. Muraya]

Even as conspiracy theories (continue to) abound, let us note age old
wisdom stating:

"Every matter/case must be established by two or three witnesses"

Over 3 elections/witnesses exist as to how many votes were probably cast on
March 4th, 2013.

Looking at Nairobi votes, (i) the presidential, (ii) governor and (iii)
senator -- total votes cast were over 1.3 million (over 72% voter turnout)
in all 3 races.

If voter turnout in Nairobi has averaged 50% in past elections (2002, 2007,
2010 - referendum), this was an over 40% increase....



On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 2:03 PM, Brian Munyao Longwe <blongwe at gmail.com>wrote:

> @Walu
>
> A forced marriage is very different from a marriage between consenting
> partners. I venture to say that the "marriage" between Kibaki and Raila was
> forced.
>
> The "marriages" in this election were consensual. Night and day difference.
>
> As for the RTS system - I beg to differ. Not matter how much we may WANT
> the electronic system to have been there as a parallel verification system
> the truth (and the fact) is that RTS was merely for transmission of
> PROVISIONAL results (as clearly indicated in practically all official
> specifications for the RTS). As per the Supreme Court the real vote was the
> paper ballot count along with the various checks and balances.
>
> Nevertheless your reasoning is spot on in terms of one of the ways in
> which technology *can* be used to enhance the vote. Hopefully if anything
> comes out of this dialogue, some of these points will be included in the
> design of future systems intended to support the election.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Brian
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 12:52 PM, Walubengo J <jwalu at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> @Brian,
>> Coalition Govt will be with us forever.   Our current govt, Jubilee is a
>> coalition between TNA and URP.  So expect "nusu-mkate" politics to be with
>> us for a while and it is not necessarily a bad thing.  Even UK, Germany,
>> Israel and many other mature democracies have these types of governments.
>> Perhaps we just need to learn how to manage them.
>>
>> @Rigia,
>> Nice piece on the technology and election processes.  But it misses one
>> fundamental that most analysts, legal counsel and I dare say the Supreme
>> court may have missed.  The fact that the Results Transmission System (RTS)
>> is not just useful in "speeding-up" the announcement of results but its
>> fundamental and more useful role is by acting as a PARALLEL verification
>> mechanism.
>>
>> What this means is that once the tallying has been done and announced at
>> the LOCAL Polling station, those very (Presidential) results are supposed
>> to be instantly transmitted to the NATIONAL Level and thereof made
>> public to the wider national community. In essence the "local" data is no
>> longer just local but becomes "global", and any attempt to modify the same
>> at a later stage,  by way of agreement, error or outright corruption will
>> require a good amount of explanation. This is because what was Transmitted
>> and displayed electronically is expected to match the physical election
>> Forms 34 as they arrive at the National level, 2-3days later.
>>
>> Remember, just because all agents did sign the election documents
>> (Form34) maybe good but it is not sufficient evidence that what was
>> countersigned is indeed what was announced (each signatures has a price?).
>> It is much stronger and a better  check if what has been countersigned
>> manually is cross-checked against another parallel system - the Results
>> Transmission System. One may then ask, what if the RTS is also compromised?
>> i.e. Agents collude with the Returning Officer to sends fictitious results
>> instanteneously over the RTS?  This is unlikely to happen because as our
>> outgoing President, Mwai Kibaki once rightly put it, you need Intelligence
>> to rig elections :-).  Most of this "intelligence" only occurs after a
>> period of time (1-2-3days) later when 60-70-80% of the results at various
>> polling stations is locally  known  but remains globally or nationallyunkown (awaiting physical arrival of Form36) . It will not be very
>> intelligeny to start rigging an election, when you are yet to gather the
>> general trend(intelligence) of the results since one can easily over-rig
>> and get caught :-). So you can bet your salary that instantly transmitted
>> results are likely to be more reliable/correct results as compared to the
>> physical ones that will arrive 3days later.
>>
>> Put differently "instantaneous" transmission of  results at the polling
>> stations distributes widely what is otherwise "local" knowledge and DENIES
>> potential election riggers the opportunity and the time to leverage on this
>> type of intelligence. The Results Transmission System ensures that no
>> single candidate enjoys the monopoly of local knowledge (Results at
>> Polling Station that are not yet in the national public domain) and thus
>> eliminates the temptation to abuse the same to their advantage. Knowledge
>> is indeed power and local knowledge is even more powerful - I should add.
>> If politician's Agents knew that Polling results were no longer "local" but
>> widely known across the country - courtesy of the instantaneous Results
>> Transmission System - then the temptation to sign against fictitious/edited
>> result figures will be greatly reduced.  Indeed this fact alone, will
>> diminish any Politician's desire to even begin to compromise Agents at the
>> Polling station since it is futile to do so upon knowing that the Results
>> are already "out and about" in the public domain.
>>
>> So my prayer for 2017/18 is that as an ICT community, we must ask and
>> indeed demand that IEBC ensures that as a minimum tech-input to the
>> elections, the Results Transmission System must work.
>>
>> Lets Enjoy our Easter and the Jubilee years ahead.
>>
>> walu.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>   ------------------------------
>> *From:* Brian Munyao Longwe <blongwe at gmail.com>
>> *To:* jwalu at yahoo.com p
>> *Cc:* KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke>
>> *Sent:* Saturday, March 30, 2013 11:11 PM
>>
>> *Subject:* Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the
>> Kenyan general election of 2013
>>
>> Since I have developed a reputation for saying the unpopular things that
>> people think but are either too shy or too conflicted to talk about I will
>> make a simple point that I have observed over the past few years.
>>
>> While the coalition government was lauded as a reasonable way of dealing
>> with the electoral debacle that we faced in 2007, the truth is that for the
>> past 5 years there have been some very strange and unusual dynamics at work
>> in the operations and makeup of Government departments and agencies. A
>> massive plus has been the much higher levels of scrutiny and
>> accountability. But I would like to suggest that the benefits have been
>> outweighed by the disadvantages.
>>
>> A good example, and one that I would like to use here is the IEBC - it is
>> no secret that the two principals had to "share out" the various positions
>> that needed to be filled both a commissioner as well as senior management.
>> This has been the pattern for almost all appointments and recruiting
>> exercises across Government.
>>
>> I venture to say that this approach has been counterproductive and aside
>> from yielding teams that can work together in planning, policy, strategy
>> and implementation within their departments/agencies has yielded a replica
>> of the competitive, antagonistic, selfish and almost vindictive tension
>> that has been evident between the two principals since day one.
>>
>> It is my sincere hope that the next government will be marked by a
>> complete change in attitude, with more of a genuine team-based dynamic in
>> terms of setting and achieving organizational goals.
>>
>> My two cents,
>>
>> Brian
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 10:21 PM, Dick Omondi <Dick.Omondi at ke.airtel.com>wrote:
>>
>> Now that we have a court decision that clears the matter of the
>> presidency, perhaps it is now time to remove the emotions of the decision,
>> turn away from politics and get down to the core issues in real
>> institutional management and those surrounding the processes and the people
>> around the IEBC lest we sit back and get through another four years and put
>> together another unit in the last year of the 5 and go back to the same
>> merry go round.
>> ------------------------------
>>  *From*: kictanet **
>> *To*: Dick Omondi
>> *Cc*: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions **
>> *Sent*: Sat Mar 30 21:40:14 2013
>>
>> *Subject*: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the
>> Kenyan general election of 2013
>> Thank you Ali. I appreciate your comments. Shukran.
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Ali Hussein <ali at hussein.me.ke> wrote:
>>
>> Wariga
>>
>> Thanks for sharing. I enjoyed the read. I want to however object to the
>> words:-
>>
>> '...the election results show that technology has failed them.'
>>
>> I humbly submit that what failed us in this case is a mix of partisan
>> politicking, a knack for jostling to see how each proponent could
>> manipulate the process for their own benefit and lastly the failure of the
>> IEBC leadership to accept and tell Kenyans to our faces that the most
>> expensive technology ever bought for elections in Kenya (and Probably
>> Africa) was designed to fail before it landed in the country.
>>
>> I would replace the sentence '...the election results show that
>> technology has failed them.' with the sentence
>>
>> '...the election results show that *leadership* has failed them.'
>>
>> The saving grace is that we have a sober Supreme Court and we thank God
>> for them.
>>
>> Ali Hussein
>> CEO | 3mice interactive media Ltd
>> Principal | Telemedia Africa Ltd
>>
>> +254 773/713 601113
>>
>> "The future belongs to him who knows how to wait." - Russian Proverb
>>
>> Sent from my iPad
>>
>> On Mar 29, 2013, at 11:05 PM, Warigia Bowman <warigia at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> I thought you guys might enjoy this piece.
>>
>> http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/2013329135519365308.html
>>
>> Take a look, and tell me what you think. :-)
>>
>> Warigia
>>
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>>
>>
>> --
>> Dr. Warigia Bowman
>> Assistant Professor
>> Clinton School of Public Service
>> University of Arkansas
>> wbowman at clintonschool.uasys.edu
>> -------------------------------------------------
>> View my research on my SSRN Author page:
>> http://ssrn.com/author=1479660
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>> for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and
>> regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT
>> sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.
>>
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>
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> The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform
> for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and
> regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT
> sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.
>
> KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors
> online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth,
> share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do
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