Kenya: Kenya’s Blockchain Election

4 years in the past, and a yr after the nullification of the 2017 election in Kenya, the electoral fee stated that expertise can be employed to permit presidential candidates to entry election outcomes safely.

This, apparently, was with a purpose to enhance transparency and reduce perceptions of opacity. To this finish, the East African nation labored in direction of using blockchain expertise to supply real-time outcomes which couldn’t be interfered with at any level. Typically, cryptocurrency transactions are verified and recorded utilizing distributed-ledger expertise, a blockchain.

True to his phrase, the Unbiased Electoral and Boundaries Fee (IEBC) Chair Wafula Chebukati has emerged victorious from an all-front assault on the fee he chairs and the place his mandate was to announce Kenya’s fifth president.

On Tuesday, August 9, 2022, Kenyans held nationwide elections in a voting system that carefully mirrored the Bitcoin blockchain. This expertise has saved Kenya from what is common in lots of African elections- huge vote rigging.

Regardless of Raila Odinga, one of many contenders disputing the election outcomes, observers from inside and outdoors Kenya have been happy with the method.

East Africa’s funding hub’s democracy has grown, and most African international locations now look to Kenya for governance fashions. Ladies management was a serious focus of the not too long ago concluded train.

What makes Kenya’s 2022 election historic?

The voter identification system was encrypted from the start to the tip. The biometrics of voters have been protected by a specifically designed election administration system. To vote, a registered voter needed to be verified by an digital gadget linked to the Kenya Built-in Election Administration System (KIEMS) after presenting their Nationwide ID or passport.

The KIEMS Kits

The KIEMS scans the voter’s fingerprint and shows the voter’s data in accordance with the Digital Voter Identification (EVID) system.

Following profitable verification, the Presiding Officer permits the voter to solid their vote by marking their most popular candidate on the poll papers within the six elective seats.

Solely 190,000 (1.3%) of the 14.2 million voters who solid ballots have been manually recognized. This was resulting from poor web connectivity in some areas and distorted fingerprints of some voters.

The polling station processAfter a voter is verified utilizing the KIEMS package, the clerks hand the voter six poll papers and the voter proceeds to mark the poll papers figuring out their alternative after which putting them within the six poll bins within the following order: President, Member of Nationwide Meeting, Member of County Council, Member of County Council, Member of County Council, Member of County Council, Member of County Council, Member of County Council, County Governor, Meeting, Senator, County Ladies Consultant.

A clerk stamps the voter’s index finger with indelible ink as proof of voting. The Presiding Officer (PO) then counts the votes per poll field after the polls shut at 5 p.m.

The process is carried out within the presence of observers, brokers, clerks, and members of the media.

When the presidential tally (type 34A) is completed, the PO scans it and sends it to the IEBC tallying centre.

The fee’s choice to add all type 34As from all 46,232 polling stations of their public portal, which was accessible globally, was the election’s excessive level. Additionally, it was a masterstroke in making certain credibility. The attention-grabbing bit about this course of is that the outcomes on the polling stations unfold all through the nation and a few within the diaspora have been closing. Which means that the outcomes couldn’t be altered after that they had been transmitted from the polling stations.

The general public and members of the fourth property have been current throughout the counting. Exterior organisations such because the BBC, Reuters, and the Elections Statement Group (ELOG) additionally tallied the transmitted election types on the IEBC portal.

Using expertise within the IEBC verification course of

For every type 34A to succeed in the Nationwide Tallying Centre (NTC), the tallied vote figures needed to match the info of voters scanned by the KIEMS package. The package eradicated any risk of voter impersonation.

Position of blockchain in Kenya’s election course of in 2027

As beforehand acknowledged, the voting system is primarily digital. The guide portion contains the distribution of poll papers to voters and the counting and verification of polling station types.

The extra arms that maintain the electoral materials, the larger the amount of mistrust that afflicts African elections.

The system remains to be underneath investigation, although the nation’s literacy price stays excessive, at 81.54 per cent, in keeping with Nation Economic system.

Blockchain adoption can be a big step towards eradicating election final result disputes which characterise most African elections.