Kenyans Still Don’t Know Who their Next President Will Be

Election head Wafula Chebukati has urged people to be patient and not to panic that media houses are releasing differing tallies. Each organisation is making calculations based on its own manual entry of data from more than 46,000 polling stations. But it is only the electoral commission that can declare the winner. The media’s tallies show that the two leading candidates – Raila Odinga and William Ruto – are neck and neck. Teams of journalists working for various outlets are engaged in the laborious task of uploading the figures received from each of the polling stations one-by-one. Each media house is doing it a different speed and choosing the polling stations in a different order. When it comes to the IEBC, on top of compiling the results, officials need to verify each one – another time consuming task. Officials are currently comparing the results the commission received in the form of a photograph from the polling stations with the actual results sheet, which is being hand delivered to the tallying centre in the capital, Nairobi. This is to ensure that both results match and a key reason why things are taking so long. Counting in some polling stations was also delayed and travel to Nairobi, especially by agents from far-flung areas, could be further factors in slowing things down.

SOURCE: BBC