Lawyer Eric Gumbo has claimed that out of 46,229 KIEMS kits deployed around the country, 46,201 worked with at least 200 ineffective in the just concluded August 9 general polls.
Gumbo faulted the aspirants who failed to present an agent to manage their votes and in return pointed blame fingers at the electoral body claiming that it would not be appropriate to then come and burden the subsequent processes through applications for scrutiny.
“If the law gives an opportunity to choose an agent for purposes of verifying elections, and you fail to present an agent, is it appropriate to burden the processes through applications such as what we are seeing? If you choose one you don’t trust, and one who does not understand why you assigned them that responsibility, you can’t blame anyone,” Gumbo faulted.
Gumbo believes that a mathematical representation leads to more than 99 per cent success rate showcasing that the commission achieved the constitutional imperatives contemplated under Article 86, likening the success to the current education curriculum grading which has standardised grade A as from 88 marks score upwards.
On the Michael Ouma affidavit which states that there were more than 380 million hits, trying to access the public portal, Gumbo refutes the allegations as he reiterates that none of the systems even blinked.
He said that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) portal has two firewalls that secure its transmission system. This transmission is done through a private, secure network.
“The entire network through which election results are transmitted is secured with double firewalls… for somebody to intercept, they must have information on voter turnout of that day of every polling station data they intercept…that is how secure that environment is… It is a ‘military grade’ system,” urged Gumbo.
Gumbo showed the reason and role by the Venezuelans who came in the country ahead of the general elections stating that that the team were to be logged out of the systems once the trial was complete and approved before the elections were held.
“The contract between Smartmatic and IEBC was for the supply and maintenance of the infrastructure that they had, it then meant that they had to bring their personnel… before the election, these people were logged out of the system,” echoed Gumbo.
Gumbo stated that the form 34A has 8 identified security features to avoid the manipulation of the original.
He insisted that the feature is meant to ensure the original form is not able to be confused with any other form hence whatever the announced and declared outcome at the polling station remains an authentic representation of the will of the people.
He poked holes in affidavit filed by activist John Githongo accusing him of forging evidence and logs in to the system as he demonstrated in the affidavit.
“If you present evidence that is falsified, you must stop to ask yourself whether there would be a consequence or not. That is the only way through which this court would be able to sit and preside over the matters presented with ease,” affirmed Gumbo
Gumbo insisted that the IEBC was transparent in the transmission of presidential election results based on the mathematical representation as presented by the poll body which has a success record.