Kenya’s Supreme Court says it nullified last month’s presidential election because the voting may have been hacked, and accused the electoral commission of failing to verify results before announcing them.
The court further said the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission had announced the results prematurely, before it had received all the required forms tallying the results from polling stations, adding that the electoral body cannot therefore be said to have verified the results.
The election controversy hinged on two paper forms used to legally validate the ballots — one from 40,883 polling stations and the other from 290 constituencies.
Representatives from rival parties were required to approve the forms before they were scanned and electronically transmitted to a national tallying center in Nairobi, where they were to be put online immediately so that they could be crosschecked.
But the electronic system, which had been overseen by an election official, who was killed on the eve of the vote, broke down.