Factcheck: Media houses can release election tallies

Ballot boxes at the Makueni National Cereals board warehouse on July 24, 2013 ahead of the Friday Makueni senatorial by-election. PHOTO | JENNIFER MUIRURI | NATION MEDIA GROUP

“…I know some media houses have been engaging into dialogue about making their own tallying centers and releasing their own results. I hope that your results will be released after the IEBC has released its official results…”

-         Communications Authority of Kenya Director General Francis Wangusi on July 18, 2017 at a KEPSA Meeting

Can media houses release their own election tallies?

A number of media house, including the Nation Media Group will be conducting an independent tally of the results.  The matter is increasingly important in light of a court ruling on April 7, 2017 that declared that results in a presidential election announced at the tallying centre at the constituency level are final, and eliminated the use of a national tallying centre in releasing final election results.

According to the Elections Act, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) shall determine, declare and publish the results of an election immediately after close of polling.

The High Court held that provisions of the Elections Act, in particular, sections39(2) and (3) that provided that results declared by the returning officer were provisional, were unconstitutional.

Before determining and declaring the final results of an election under the subsection, the IEBC may announce the provisional results of an election. Furthermore, the IEBC shall announce the provisional and final results in the order in which the tallying of the results is completed.

FINAL TALLIES

Once IEBC announces the results at the constituency level, journalists will relay the official results to their media houses for tallying, meaning the media will be adding final constituency results given by the IEBC. 

According to IEBC Communications Officer Mr Andrew Limo, media houses can release the results they have, but cannot release final tallies until the IEBC does. “You will not say so and so is the winner or so and so,” he said, “but you may give the numbers the way you have found, of course with a final disclaimer that the final numbers will come from IEBC, but according to us, this is what we have found. ”

Furthermore, he added, technology would mean that many people would pass on the results. “People have smartphones now, so they will take photos of the results,” he said.

There is no law that prohibits media houses from releasing tallies after the election. Results released by the returning officer at the constituency level are final. No media house can count the votes and so it would not be able to produce its “own results.”