Post by nowayhaha on Aug 4, 2013 15:41:40 GMT 3
Numbers: Not a single observer has concluded that the election was a sham and that there was massive rigging on a scale that would have altered the outcome
One of the most important safeguards put in place to curb mischief before the March 4 elections was the implementation of a Parallel Vote Tallying mechanism to be implemented by a coalition of NGOs and religious organisations.
Why did donors pour so much money into the system which was to be overseen by the Elections Observation Group?
The answer is simply because the system works. It functions by deploying thousands of vote observers who don’t go around seeking voters’ opinions but instead observe the work of the electoral commission and take down their own tallies.
During the 2010 referendum on the new constitution, this system was deployed with stunning results. ELOG projected that the ‘Yes’ side would win the constitution referendum by 68.8 per cent of the votes cast. In the end, the Interim Independent Electoral Commission (IIEC) announced that the ‘Yes’ side had won by 68.6 per cent.
Given this background, donors invested in an enhanced Parallel Vote Tallying (PVT) system to observe the landmark March 4 elections. More than 7,000 observers were sent to polling stations selected across the country on the basis of scientific sampling.
And what was the outcome of ELOG’s observations? Readers may not know it because the media has strongly covered the intense criticism of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) while ignoring any reports that present a contrary opinion.
No view has more weight than that of the ELOG. And as the team’s final report released on Monday indicated, the outcome of the March 4 election as announced by IEBC was generally – within one percentage point – exactly the same as that which the ELOG observers found.
The last election will go down in history as the most observed in African history since the 1994 poll in post-Apartheid South Africa.
These are the numbers. There were a record 21,554 accredited domestic observers and 1,834 international observers (in addition to 6,327 local and international journalists).
Not a single one of these institutions – not the European Union, not the Carter Centre, not the African Union or any other group – has concluded that the election was a sham and that there was massive rigging on a scale that would have altered the outcome.
The numbers are there for all to see. Unlike 2007 when ODM commanded a large majority in Parliament, this time, the Jubilee side won the most seats in the Senate, in the Gubernatorial race, in the Women’s Representative contests and secured a majority in Parliament.
Yet propaganda is a powerful thing because the public has been led to believe – against all the evidence – that the election was neither transparent nor free or fair.
The Cord leadership has used every opportunity to try and discredit the IEBC which is now the full time focus of its wrath after the attacks on the Supreme Court failed to gain traction.
The latest political football was the Makueni by-election. Before that poll, Mr Raila Odinga said the party would never again take part in an election supervised by the IEBC.
That statement came at a time when it was clearly anticipated that the coalition’s candidate, Kethi Diana Kilonzo, would be disqualified after it became clear she was not a registered voter.
When the courts offered Cord a lifeline – literally bending over backwards to satisfy Cord’s vocal supporters – Cord suddenly rediscovered their faith in IEBC.
Their candidate won but the questions on the IEBC remained. How was it possible to deliver electronic results successfully from all 914 centres? They asked.
Well, the success of the Makueni poll can also be seen as illustrating that it was a folly for Kenya to go for a major election, with six seats up for grabs on one single day and expect the whole thing to come off without a hitch.
The IEBC will also inevitably gain experience with time. This time, they found themselves having to accommodate a new candidate only days before the election yet the law requires they get 45 days for this. Still, they managed to deliver a credible election. Are we suggesting, in calling for the disbandment of the IEBC, that we should have a new institution, totally inexperienced, in every election cycle?
The truth is that much of the criticism of the IEBC has been purely emotional and based on dissatisfaction with the outcome of the last election without having any basis in fact at all.
Perhaps the most potent lie which has been bandied about and taken as a canon of fact is the claim that vast numbers of people voted for president and not for the other five electoral posts up for grabs.
The European Union observer mission correctly found that the variance between the votes cast for president and governor was less than 1 per cent.
Those numbers were vindicated by the IEBC’s published results. Yet politicians and particularly NGO types who had a huge financial interest in the election – and now purport to audit the IEBC – have repeated endlessly that more than a million people voted only in the presidential race.
Numbers don’t lie and the figures released by the IEBC align exactly with the observations of the European Union.
The figures show that the presidential votes exceeded the gubernatorial votes by 78,325 votes. In percentage terms this means that the presidential voter turnout was 85.91 per cent compared to gubernatorial turnout which was 85.36 per cent. This clearly indicates that the disparity between presidential voter turnout and gubernatorial voter turnout was 0.55 per cent; less than 1 per cent. This contradicts Cord’s claim that the presidential votes exceeded the gubernatorial votes by 267,798 votes.
Besides, there are no regional patterns to indicate the Jubilee side was more favoured by this variance than Cord.
Of the 47 Kenya counties, presidential votes were excess in 38 counties, while gubernatorial votes exceeded presidential votes in nine counties. Of the 38 counties where presidential votes were excess, Machakos and Bungoma counties recorded the greatest disparities of 15,656 and 10,846 respectively.
This means that in Machakos County, presidential voter turnout was 83.59 per cent compared to gubernatorial which was 80.08 per cent, making the discrepancy 3.52 per cent. Other counties which recorded a substantial disparity were Nairobi City and Kilifi whereby presidential votes were more that gubernatorial by 7,751 and respectively 6,370.
Machakos and Bungoma counties each had excess presidential votes than the expansive and populous Rift Valley Province which recorded a variance of 7,441, this being 0.25 per cent, the lowest of all the provinces.
It is well known that Jubilee won the election in Rift Valley handily. Where does this leave the theory that more votes were cast for president in Jubilee strongholds?
In simple terms, what the Cord leadership and their allies in civil society have to accept is that election results should count for something.
The IEBC did not decide the last election. The over 12.3 million voters who lined up for hours chose the leadership they preferred and the losing side is barking up the wrong tree when it demands that constitutional institutions such as the IEBC and the Supreme Court should be damned.
www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/Observers-report-vindicates-IEBC/-/440808/1936242/-/item/0/-/128orgw/-/index.html
One of the most important safeguards put in place to curb mischief before the March 4 elections was the implementation of a Parallel Vote Tallying mechanism to be implemented by a coalition of NGOs and religious organisations.
Why did donors pour so much money into the system which was to be overseen by the Elections Observation Group?
The answer is simply because the system works. It functions by deploying thousands of vote observers who don’t go around seeking voters’ opinions but instead observe the work of the electoral commission and take down their own tallies.
During the 2010 referendum on the new constitution, this system was deployed with stunning results. ELOG projected that the ‘Yes’ side would win the constitution referendum by 68.8 per cent of the votes cast. In the end, the Interim Independent Electoral Commission (IIEC) announced that the ‘Yes’ side had won by 68.6 per cent.
Given this background, donors invested in an enhanced Parallel Vote Tallying (PVT) system to observe the landmark March 4 elections. More than 7,000 observers were sent to polling stations selected across the country on the basis of scientific sampling.
And what was the outcome of ELOG’s observations? Readers may not know it because the media has strongly covered the intense criticism of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) while ignoring any reports that present a contrary opinion.
No view has more weight than that of the ELOG. And as the team’s final report released on Monday indicated, the outcome of the March 4 election as announced by IEBC was generally – within one percentage point – exactly the same as that which the ELOG observers found.
The last election will go down in history as the most observed in African history since the 1994 poll in post-Apartheid South Africa.
These are the numbers. There were a record 21,554 accredited domestic observers and 1,834 international observers (in addition to 6,327 local and international journalists).
Not a single one of these institutions – not the European Union, not the Carter Centre, not the African Union or any other group – has concluded that the election was a sham and that there was massive rigging on a scale that would have altered the outcome.
The numbers are there for all to see. Unlike 2007 when ODM commanded a large majority in Parliament, this time, the Jubilee side won the most seats in the Senate, in the Gubernatorial race, in the Women’s Representative contests and secured a majority in Parliament.
Yet propaganda is a powerful thing because the public has been led to believe – against all the evidence – that the election was neither transparent nor free or fair.
The Cord leadership has used every opportunity to try and discredit the IEBC which is now the full time focus of its wrath after the attacks on the Supreme Court failed to gain traction.
The latest political football was the Makueni by-election. Before that poll, Mr Raila Odinga said the party would never again take part in an election supervised by the IEBC.
That statement came at a time when it was clearly anticipated that the coalition’s candidate, Kethi Diana Kilonzo, would be disqualified after it became clear she was not a registered voter.
When the courts offered Cord a lifeline – literally bending over backwards to satisfy Cord’s vocal supporters – Cord suddenly rediscovered their faith in IEBC.
Their candidate won but the questions on the IEBC remained. How was it possible to deliver electronic results successfully from all 914 centres? They asked.
Well, the success of the Makueni poll can also be seen as illustrating that it was a folly for Kenya to go for a major election, with six seats up for grabs on one single day and expect the whole thing to come off without a hitch.
The IEBC will also inevitably gain experience with time. This time, they found themselves having to accommodate a new candidate only days before the election yet the law requires they get 45 days for this. Still, they managed to deliver a credible election. Are we suggesting, in calling for the disbandment of the IEBC, that we should have a new institution, totally inexperienced, in every election cycle?
The truth is that much of the criticism of the IEBC has been purely emotional and based on dissatisfaction with the outcome of the last election without having any basis in fact at all.
Perhaps the most potent lie which has been bandied about and taken as a canon of fact is the claim that vast numbers of people voted for president and not for the other five electoral posts up for grabs.
The European Union observer mission correctly found that the variance between the votes cast for president and governor was less than 1 per cent.
Those numbers were vindicated by the IEBC’s published results. Yet politicians and particularly NGO types who had a huge financial interest in the election – and now purport to audit the IEBC – have repeated endlessly that more than a million people voted only in the presidential race.
Numbers don’t lie and the figures released by the IEBC align exactly with the observations of the European Union.
The figures show that the presidential votes exceeded the gubernatorial votes by 78,325 votes. In percentage terms this means that the presidential voter turnout was 85.91 per cent compared to gubernatorial turnout which was 85.36 per cent. This clearly indicates that the disparity between presidential voter turnout and gubernatorial voter turnout was 0.55 per cent; less than 1 per cent. This contradicts Cord’s claim that the presidential votes exceeded the gubernatorial votes by 267,798 votes.
Besides, there are no regional patterns to indicate the Jubilee side was more favoured by this variance than Cord.
Of the 47 Kenya counties, presidential votes were excess in 38 counties, while gubernatorial votes exceeded presidential votes in nine counties. Of the 38 counties where presidential votes were excess, Machakos and Bungoma counties recorded the greatest disparities of 15,656 and 10,846 respectively.
This means that in Machakos County, presidential voter turnout was 83.59 per cent compared to gubernatorial which was 80.08 per cent, making the discrepancy 3.52 per cent. Other counties which recorded a substantial disparity were Nairobi City and Kilifi whereby presidential votes were more that gubernatorial by 7,751 and respectively 6,370.
Machakos and Bungoma counties each had excess presidential votes than the expansive and populous Rift Valley Province which recorded a variance of 7,441, this being 0.25 per cent, the lowest of all the provinces.
It is well known that Jubilee won the election in Rift Valley handily. Where does this leave the theory that more votes were cast for president in Jubilee strongholds?
In simple terms, what the Cord leadership and their allies in civil society have to accept is that election results should count for something.
The IEBC did not decide the last election. The over 12.3 million voters who lined up for hours chose the leadership they preferred and the losing side is barking up the wrong tree when it demands that constitutional institutions such as the IEBC and the Supreme Court should be damned.
www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/Observers-report-vindicates-IEBC/-/440808/1936242/-/item/0/-/128orgw/-/index.html
