Kenya Elections 2013 : ELOG’s live-updating PVT observer reporting

The Elections Observation Group, Kenya ELOG’s live-updating Parallel Vote Tabulation(PVT) observer reporting of Kenya's 4th March 2013 Elections

Kenya Decides - The Kenya Election, Mobiles, and Interactive Media

The polling stations are slowly closing in Kenya in a so-far largely peaceful day. This is a critical election in one of the most technically-advanced countries in sub-Saharan Africa with many monitoring efforts underway as #kenyadecides (to use the Twitter hashtag of choice). While many predict that is going to be a run-off election, we wanted to give a 'rundown' of all the cool tech used that we are watching:

1. The IEBC, the Kenyan Election Commission, put up (with some help from Google) an interactive map and SMS service for people to find their voter registration stations, registration status, and polling station on election day. It also includes a candidate finder. While the map has some usability issues, it's become a very useful resource for citizens that only can be improved upon.  It's a model for other independent election commissions that is commendable. IEBC's Facebook Page is also worth watching. Incidentally, by all accounts, the IEBC so far has done a great job providing security and ballots; it's also been very responsive to incident reports from both systematic election monitoring organizations and citizen reporting efforts.  No small feat given the enormous voter turnout. 

Most interestingly, IEBC promises to report election results in close-to real time using its API. UPDATE: The API from the IEBCwith real-time election results data as the vote is counted is working fabulously and media houses in Kenya are pulling the data and transmitting it live on television. Unprecedented for Kenya. 

2. Google, as is has in many other countries, has put up an Election Portal that aggregates news, citizen reports (edited by Storyful) and lots of Hangouts. The Portal also includes extensive candidate information. We would have liked some information there from and about the civil society organizations monitoring the election here.  But the Google doodle the morning of the election on the Kenya Google home page was a nice touch.

3. ELOG (NDI's partner), the domestic election monitoring organization, has trained, during many months of hard work, 7240 citizen observers who are stationed at a randomly selected number of polling stations for the entire day, reporting back via SMS on the conduct and the results of the election. Because the number of polling stations is a representative sample and the reports are structured replies to a questionnaire, the incoming results that get parsed by a database are highly accurate. Observers report throughout the day and there is constant two-way communication between a central data center and the observes in the field to confirm and verify reports.

For instance, ELOG's observers reported statistically significant data on the opening of election day which showed that at only 59.7% of polling stations opened on time, but that there was security present at 99.6% of polling stations. ELOG's website, Facebook page and Twitter are good resources to follow as well for this kind of election data.

ELOG will be reporting until well into the night as polling stations are slowly closing and is promising more maps and infographics.

4. Uchaguzi, a project of the citizen-reporting organization Ushahidi, launched an ambitious and very interesting hate-speech monitoring effort in the pre-election period and issued regular reports in the advent of the election. This was a fascinating project that we watched closely to see how to integrate better social media monitoring into our work.  Ushahidi is also running a more traditional citizen-reporting effort with anyone being able to report information about the election. Interestingly, unlike in many of the instances of the platform where there is no feedback loop or action after a report is submitted but a citizen, Uchaguzi installed (as it did in a few other elections where the organization was directly involved) a http://sitroom.uchaguzi.co.ke ">situation room to verify critical incidents and escalate them to election authorities (though at the time of this writing the situaltion room link is down). As usual, the team at Ushahidi is doing a great job innovating in the citizen reporting space. We continue to be impressed.

5. There are lots and lots of candidate finder sites for the Kenya election. The one that seemed to have gotten the most attention isWenyenchi that also has a mobile site (quite beta, though) and an Android app.  We have not fully tested it but it provides a good overview of candidates and an electoral boundary-finder (though when we played with it it was a bit buggy).

Al Jazeera English has a great interactive dashboard with candidate information, boundaries, it's interactive SMS 'Speak' platform that allows citizen voices to be heard, and interactive poll data. We are big fans of Al Jazeera English's interactive and social media innovations.

6. There are many other efforts that aggregate social media on #kenyadecides. We just looked at Crowdvoice's election-related aggregation which, while not quite complete (we wonder how the pictures andvideos that show up are chosen?) nonetheless an interesting platform.

We are sure we missed lots of innovative efforts here, though!  Leave us a comment or tweet us at @nditech and we'll add more projects as we hear about them. Good luck with the vote, Kenya!

http://www.demworks.org/blog/2013/03/kenya-decides-kenya-election-mobiles-and-interactive-media

Kenyan journalists offered support hotline during election

Journalists threatened with violence or intimidation while covering Kenya's presidential election on Monday will be able to report the abuse to a distress hotline, in an effort to prevent the hostilities that marred the 2007 poll. All journalists with Kenyan election accreditation will be given the support line number, established by the Media Council of Kenya with funding from the Rory Peck Trust.

Tina Carr, director of the Rory Peck Trust, said the hotline would offer urgent assistance – including evacuation or medical attention – to journalists in danger.

Early reports suggest a handful of local journalists have been attacked or faced intimidation while covering politics in Kenya since February. In the disputed 2007 election, independent journalists were targeted by both police and members of the public amid widespread ethnic violence in which more than 1,200 people were killed.

Victor Bwire, deputy chief executive and programmes manager the Media Council of Kenya, said: "This partnership to support Kenya's independent journalists at such a critical time, is our acknowledgement of the important role that they play in the reporting of elections in Kenya, and our concern for the safety of those who do the reporting."

Carr said the hotline was vital to journalists in Kenya, many of whom are freelance and operate without the support of major media organisations.

The hotline is being administered by Bwire and Tom Rhodes, East Africa consultant of the Committee to Protect Journalists, as well as a network of regional journalist organisations.

At least 15 people were reportedly killed on Monday as small pockets of violence broke out before the start of voting at 6am local time (3am GMT). As in 2007, the presidential race has come down to two candidates, this time between prime minister Raila Odinga and deputy prime minister Uhuru Kenyatta.

The Media Council of Kenya reported on Saturday that a correspondent for the Star newspaper in Homa Bay, on the north coast of Kenya, was attacked and detained by General Service Unit officers after covering a fracas between two rival political groups.

 

source : http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/mar/04/kenyan-journalists-offered-support-hotline

Kenya Election Update: Voting Progresses despite Biometric Hitches

Voting commenced smoothly this morning in Kenya until it was marred with hitches in BVR kits across some polling centers especially in Kibera and Mathare compelling IEBC to shift to the manual system.

Meanwhile, the electoral commission chairman Ahmed Issack Hassan,has ordered repeat polls in five of the 1,450 wards in Nyabasi West and Goke Haraka Wards in Kuria East and Bunyala South, Gwasi North and Samburu North Wards due to irreparable errors on the ballot papers.

"We have been forced to call off elections in these areas because of mix up in the ballot papers. In some cases we have missing names of candidates while in other cases names have been interchanged," Mr. Hassan revealed adding that the repeat polls would be conducted on March 11 2013 notifying returning officers, presiding officersand candidate's agents in respective wards.

Mr. Hassan announced that where the machines had failed IEBC officials had been instructed to use printed versions of the poll books which had captured photographs of the voters in all the polling centers around the country.

The commission also announced the elections had experienced insecurity in some parts of Kenya citing incidences in Mandera where an explosion erupted. In Garissa, he said fighting erupted in some parts while in Mombasa violence was reported in Changamwe constituency where armed thugs raided and violently killed five policemen.

According to Mr.Hassan, the response of security agencies has been commendable so far, and called on Kenyans to keep vigil over the process to ensure fairness and integrity prevailed.

Mr. Hassan said despite the technological problems the commission was still determined to deliver a free and fair elections and appealed to Kenyans not to worry about the few hitches reported.

AEP

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Kenya, between hope and fear

Daniel Branch

The violent aftermath of Kenya's previous election is present in everyone's minds as Kenyans elect a successor to Mwai Kibaki. But the past five years have brought many other issues to the fore, says Daniel Branch.

Many Kenyans will go to the polls on 4 March 2013 with a sense of trepidation. Three of the country's four elections since 1992 have been accompanied by significant violence, with 2002 the exception. On each occasion politicians used local grievances over land and inequality to label supporters of rival candidates as ethnic "outsiders". Militias were then used to force those same voters from their homes. Thousands of people were killed in violence around the 1992, 1997 and 2007 elections and tens of thousands more fled. Some of these supposed "outsiders" never returned to places where their families had lived for decades. No wonder, then, that many Kenyans see elections as something to endure rather than to celebrate.

 

In light of this history, anyone of a nervous disposition might have hoped that this would be a straightforward election with a clear result. That looks unlikely, as on the eve of the vote the final result is too close to call. President Mwai Kibaki is retiring after two terms in office, and prime minister Raila Odinga is the frontrunner. But Odinga's lead in the opinion polls is narrow, and he will almost certainly be denied an outright majority; in that case a run-off will be held in a few weeks' time.

 

Odinga's main rival is Uhuru Kenyatta, who, if successful, faces the prospect of governing the country while mounting his defence at the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague. He and his running mate, William Ruto, are accused of orchestrating the violence that followed the December 2007 election. Rather than standing aside, both decided to exercise their right - confirmed recently by the Kenyan courts - to contest the election, apparently in order to gain a position of greater strength vis-à-vis the ICC. They promise they can run the country and mount their court defences remotely, by using technology.

The rest of the world only began to notice the 2007 election when violence broke out during the suspiciously prolonged counting process, and quickly escalated. In the first two months of 2008, nearly 1,200 people lost their lives. An effect of those tragic events is that this time, Kenya has held foreign attention for months before voters go to the polls. But both foreign and local observers are nagged by a simple question: has enough been done over the past five years to avoid a repeat of the eruption?

There are some good signs, most notably independent inquiries into the management of the election and the subsequent violence, a new constitution and an ongoing reform of the judiciary. But it is hard to escape the conclusion that these reforms are not enough to guarantee a peaceful election. A collective psychosis has therefore gripped many, if by no means all, local and foreign commentators.

An array of figures, from President Obama and Kofi Annan down to the local diplomatic corps, has felt the need to advise Kenyans on how to vote - most likely to no or ill effect. Many fear further instability should Uhuru Kenyatta win, and threaten Kenya with diplomatic isolation should that happen. Uganda, whose businesses are still waiting for compensation for goods destroyed during the 2007-08 violence, has made contingency plans in case of disruption to vital imports being transported along the routes that connect it to the Indian Ocean. Foreign investment slowed in 2012 due to fears of insecurity. Local businesses have been buying dollars in case post-election violence causes the Kenyan shilling to collapse.

Ethnicity and devolution

So why does this election seem to matter so much? There is a flippant and, on one level, accurate response to this question; it doesn't. Those of a cynical persuasion could argue that - regardless of the result - it amounts to the replacement of one elite politician with a dubious record in government and a limited commitment to solving the problems of their poorest constituents by another. After all, there are few major differences of opinion over policy between the candidates, and anyone who thinks that a victory for Odinga will solve Kenya's problems with the ICC is in for a shock. Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto have access to enormous wealth and political leverage, and if they refuse to go to The Hague - whether Kenyatta is president or not - it will take a lot to budge them. Yet the ICC is a constitutional and judicial leviathan that will dominate Kenya's political landscape for years to come.

The cynical view, however, does not really answer the question. The election does matter. To insist otherwise is to patronise an electorate that will turn out in great numbers, and display euphoria and dismay in equal measure once the final result is announced. The significance of the election can also be gauged from the international attention that this vote has garnered.This is about more than the legacy of 2007-08. Kenya has not seemed so significant to the outside world since the end of the cold war. Its role in the African Union's peacebuilding mission to Somalia has placed it on the frontline of global counter-terror operations, and its economy is seen as the mainstay of a surging regional bloc encompassing northeastern and eastern Africa.

There is another answer, both common and simple, to the question of why the election matters: it's ethnicity, stupid. And it is true that voting will, with some exceptions, follow predictable ethnic patterns. But ethnicity also makes sense as a strategy for voters and leaders alike.

The voters know that there are not unlimited jobs. They also understand that land, at least in arable parts of the country, is under pressure for all sorts of reasons and that the state has a finite amount of money for investment in development projects. In those circumstances, clubbing together to protect what one holds while trying to work collectively to gain more wealth and influence is hardly irrational. There may be better strategies for such collective action, but ethnicity is what history has bequeathed Kenyans and ethnicity is what they have to work with.

For their part, the politicians are normally wealthy men and women seeking the votes of poor constituents. Ethnicity provides a mechanism by which politicians can cross sometimes vast chasms of wealth and class to win the votes of individuals with whom they otherwise share little in common. Kenya's problem is that those in power have encouraged the divisions between groups to be violent, and some of their supporters have followed suit; it is difficult to reverse back down that path.

For better or for worse, ethnicity is the way in which class, inequality and history are debated in Kenya. Beneath the labels of Kikuyu, Kalenjin, Luo, Luhya or Maasai are very different versions of the past and ideas about current and future policies. Almost any of the great debates in Kenyan politics can be read in these terms. In the interests of brevity, take just one example: devolution.

This was a subject of fierce debate in the years surrounding independence and in the early 1990s, and remains a matter of great current significance. For Kenyans, as well as choosing their member of parliament and the next president, will on 4 March be electing representatives to fill newly empowered county administrations, new county governors, and senators to represent the interests of their county in central government.

Many Kikuyu are sceptical about the value of devolution. Some critics see this as nothing more than Kikuyu ethnic chauvinism. Two of Kenya's three post-independence presidents - Jomo Kenyatta (1963-78) and the outgoing Mwai Kibaki (2002-13) - have been Kikuyu, and so the community has been portrayed as unwilling to tolerate any devolution of significant powers from central to local government. To be fair, neither president did much to dispel such criticism. But with Kikuyu - to say nothing of the other major ethnic groups - spread across the country, many feel with good reason that central government is a better guarantor of their property rights and personal security than local authorities controlled by communities who see Kikuyu as an economic and political threat. To many members of other, more economically marginal communities, such as Mijikenda at the coast or Somali in the northeast, an excessively centralised form of government is blamed for the uneven distribution of economic growth, improvements in living standards and investment in infrastructure.

 

 

A modest hope

The ICC and devolution are just two of the enormous issues that confront Kenyan voters. Others include strategies for continued economic growth, land reform, police reform; the ongoing military intervention in Somalia; incidents of terrorism at home; a coastal separatist movement; and the management of recently discovered oil-and-gas reserves. The next government will have tremendous influence over all these matters, even as it has to deal with issues of regional integration and significant fiscal pressures.

The time available for the next government to attend to any of these issues will, however, be dictated in large part by the conduct of the elections. Much that is on the agenda will have to be sacrificed if, as with the period since 2007-08, time is lost mourning the dead and undergoing prolonged processes of "transitional justice" without any transition actually taking place.

All this makes it clear that these elections are truly of great significance. Yet those hoping for dramatic change in Kenya, on 4 March or in the years to come, will be disappointed. Kenya, like most of the rest of Africa, had its equivalent of the "Arab spring" - with all its attendant joy and disappointment - two decades ago, when the rest of the world was looking elsewhere. But if revolution is not on the cards, a more modest hope is simply for the next election not to matter quite so much. It doesn't have to be like this every time, does it?

 

 

About the author

Daniel Branch is an assistant professor in history at the University of Warwick. He is the author of Defeating Mau Mau, Creating Kenya: Counterinsurgency, Civil War, and Decolonization (Cambridge University Press, 2009), and Kenya: Between Hope and Despair, 1963-2011 (Yale University Press, 2010/2011)

 

Credit : http://opendemocracy.net/daniel-branch/kenya-between-hope-and-fear