The count - Kenyan election 2007

Friday, December 28th, 2007 at 12:54 AM

The final part of the electoral process that takes part at the polling station is the counting of the votes. This is a change from the previous practice where the ballot boxes were transported to a central location in each constituency for counting. It was during this transit phase that massive rigging would take place. Ballot boxes would mysteriously double or halve between polling station and count station, sometimes a whole van of ballot boxes would be replaced. A change in the law now means that counting takes place at the polling station once voting has come to an end. The count takes places in front of a team of observers from the political parties and monitors.

First an Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) official explains to everybody the exact procedure for counting. She also takes time to point out the different roles the various ECK officials who are counting will play.

monitors and observers listening to the ECK Official

The ECK official then requests a volunteer from amongst the observers and monitors to cut the cords that have kept the ballot box closed.

Once the cords are cut they are not thrown away but kept securely in case they need to be examined later, for example if there is a suspicion that they had been tampered with previously.

The lid is then removed from the ballot box and displayed to show that there are no ballots stuck onto it.

The ballot box is then emptied of all the ballots on to a table under the watchful eye of everybody. The empty box is then displayed for everyone to confirm that it is indeed empty.

The empty ballot box is then returned to the police officer present who guards over it as well as the yet to opened ballot boxes.

Counting then begins. An ECK official picks up one ballot at a time and reads the vote while displaying it to everyone to confirm whether or not they agree. Once agreement is reached the ballot is placed in the pile of that particular candidate and the next ballot is picked up and the process repeated.

This process is a much better system that the previous one of transporting ballot boxes to a central location to be counted. I can confidently say that once the vote has been placed in the ballot box it is next to impossible to do something dodgy. There are simply too many eyes watching every single move during the count. And they watch EVERY single move. It is next to impossible to introduce a ballot that was not in box to start of with and it is even harder to try to sneak away with some marked ballot papers.

The only way to rig elections in Kenya these days is to ensure that your opponents do not vote at all. That is why so much emphasis has been made on ensuring registration is fair, that polling stations do not change at the last minute, and great lengths are taken to ensure that voter’s registers are not tampered with. Because once the ballot has been cast, it will be counted.

That’s all from me today on the day Kenyans went to the polls in record numbers to show they care about their democracy.

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