KIEMS kits identified 7.5m voters, OT Morpho tells IEBC

A total of 7,575,806 voters were identified through the KIEMS kits during last week's repeat presidential election, IEBC has disclosed.

The electoral body has given the Star a report that shows 5,525,487 of the voters being identified through fingerprints.

Another 348,839 were identified by ID cards or passports being searched on the kits while 1,490,034 were identified through an alphanumeric search.

The data was provided by French firm, OT Morpho, which provided IEBC with the election technology deployed during the elections.

IEBC wrote to the firm on the day it declared President Uhuru Kenyatta as the winner of the repeat poll after garnering 7,483,895 of the votes cast.

Read:Uhuru re-elected with 98%, IEBC says after troubled election

In its letter, IEBC requested Morpho to avail a matrix detailing the number of voters identified via the EVID in the fresh presidential elections.

"I am pleased to provide you with a report attached to this letter and detailing the numbers of identified voters per polling station, with the details of the means used for these identifications," Morpho VP and MD for Africa Olivier Charlanes said in his reply.

He added that he believes that the report will not only allow IEBC "to respond to the request of the Thirdway Alliance Kenya but also to further requests that you could receive from political parties or observers."

"We invite you to note that obviously there will be some differences between the figures of identified voters and the numbers of votes," Charlene said.

He added; "Indeed, the first figures measure an electronic process where the others result from a manual process. Please also note that the voters identified manually (without using the KIEMS kits) or the voters non-validated by the operators during the identification process are not counted as identified voters."

This disclosure comes a day after IEBC said that it had given presidential candidates' agents and observers access to its servers used during the elections.

Read: IEBC grants presidential candidates access to server

There have been claims by the opposition that the KIEMS kits only identified 3.4 million voters by the end of the voting on October 26

On election day, agents and observers were able to view the activity of KIEMS kits to see how many people had been identified after every 90 mins.

At 2pm on October 26, the KIEMS kits had sent identification data of 4.69 million voters (31.4 per cent) while at 4pm, the figure stood at 5.23 million (34.4 per cent).

At the declaration of results, IEBC said that there was a voter turnout of 38.84 per cent with Uhuru getting an equivalent of 98 per cent of all the votes cast.

But Opposition leaders led by Raila Odinga have insisted the numbers were topped up and that the turnout was much lower than reported.

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