NAIROBI, Aug. 7 (Xinhua) -- Kenya's electoral body has assured voters of free and fair elections Tuesday after complaints over plans to allow poll officials in nearly a quarter of all voting centers permission to select areas from where they could access secure internet to relay the results.
The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Chairman Wafula Chebukati told local television channels, Citizen and NTV, the polling clerks would travel with party agents to relay results.
"We want to assure Kenyans that we are committed to everyone and to this country, that it gets what it deserves - free, fair, credible, and transparent elections. We are confident that the elections will be credible," Chebukati said.
He said the polling clerks would relay results in text format but would require a Third Generation (3-G) network or 4-G telecoms connection to relay the forms containing the tallies of the Presidential vote.
He said satellite phones have been made available in the 290 constituency tallying centers for quick transmission of presidential results.
Although the Constitution gives the electoral agency seven days to announce the presidential results, Chebukati said that as soon as the results from the 290 constituencies were out, the winner would be announced.
"We cannot tell you how many hours but it will be as soon as possible. Given that it is electronic transmission, we hope it will be fast," he said.
"The Commission is prepared. We will deliver a credible election," Chebukati said in a televised interview with NTV.
"The players finished preparing yesterday (Saturday). As referees, we are prepared to give Kenyans a free, fair and credible elections, and that we say without any fear of contradiction," the electoral chief said.
"We are waiting for you and we shall be fair as the law of the land requires us to be. We are ready, we are fired, we are waiting for the players to come," said Chebukati.
Kenya's 19.6 million voters go to the polls on Tuesday to elect a President, 47 Governors, 47 Senators and 290 members of parliament and 47 women representatives.
President Uhuru Kenyatta is defending his seat for a second and final term in office with his deputy, William Ruto as the running mate.
The elections also include those of members of the County Assembly, mandated to run the operations of 47 county governments created after the 2013 elections.
Ahead of the polls, election observers said the mass exodus of people from Nairobi and former hotspots like Naivasha, 100 km outside Nairobi, is a sign voters have been disenfranchised due to security fears.
The main transport and bus companies have been verifying the voting details of travelers before allowing them to board.
On Sunday, a group called the African Election Observation Group, said despite the close of the election campaigns, measures being deployed by party mobilizers to urge voter turnout could also affect the fairness of the elections.
The group said in a report released Sunday measures targeting the high voter turnout and affecting the voluntary nature of voting could create "a siege mentality."
In 2007, a hotly contested election between President Mwai Kibaki and Odinga led to post-election violence.
Election observers added the biggest risk of failure for the IEBC is if its Kenya Integrated Electoral Management System (KIEMS) fails.
The KIEMs includes an electronic voter identification software known as EVID and another system that identifies the candidates electronically.
The system will also manage the results transmission and presentation and the biometric voter registration system. At least 45,000 of these kits have been supplied to the IEBC for the elections.
Political pundits say success of the electoral body's computerized voting system is key to the process being considered free and fair.
This is because if the system fails as it happened in 2013 general elections, the electoral body will be forced to count votes manually, and in a country where vote-rigging has been alleged in the past, the loser will no doubt challenge the result.
The African Electoral Observation Group led by Chief of mission, Ola Thomas Olufemi, warned the biggest risk to the elections depended upon the proper functioning of the digital system.
"We hope that the system would work flawlessly but how this system is managed would present the biggest risk," a researcher with the observer mission said.
The election observers have also taken issue with the lack of proper framework for conducting scientific opinion polls.
Chebukati said the IEBC was confident its systems were properly secured from third party interference.
"There should be no cause for alarm. We have sufficient firewalls in place. We have accounted for every ballot," Chebukati said.
The devices to be used by the IEBC would use a code, known as the QR code, which is accessible only to the staff of the elections body.
IEBC Information Technology Coordinator Paul Mugo said it would be nearly impossible for an outsider to penetrate the digital electronic system of transmission of the results.
Mugo said the system was encrypted and its network provided with protection from external interference.
