The French biometrics firm that supplied the system used to tally votes in Kenya’s cancelled presidential poll, has done an audit of the electronic system and showed that there was no manipulation of data, AFP reports.

The opposition leader, Raila Odinga has accused the company, OT-Morpho, of being complicit in the alleged rigging of the election, which was declared null and void by the country’s Supreme Court.

The report:

• While the court has yet to deliver its final judgement detailing what went wrong, OT-Morpho said an “in-depth audit” of the system showed the opposition’s claims about hacking to be untrue.
• The company’s chief operating officer, Frederic Beylier said that the audit, undertaken with help from external experts from security software companies, had shown the system “in no way suffered manipulation of data, attacks, attempts to penetrate the system or anything of that kind.”
• OT-Morpho supplied the 45,000 tablets used to identify voters biometrically and an associated system used to transmit the results of votes counted by electoral officials as well as a photograph of the paper form 34A on which votes were tallied.
• Delays in the scanning of these forms — which OT-Morpho put down to lack of 3G coverage in some parts of Kenya — were among the problems raised by the opposition.
• The opposition had also claimed an algorithm was introduced into the system to manipulate the results as they streamed in.
• “We obviously checked if there could have been questionable manipulations by any authorised or unauthorised persons and can confirm there was no manipulation of data that could raise questions,” said Mr Beylier.
• The company said it had transmitted all its logs to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission and was willing to participate in another external audit under the IEBC’s authority.
• Beylier slammed a campaign of threats and intimidation against the company and its employees, insisting it had carried out its job in “complete political neutrality”.
• “Some people are trying to make us the scapegoat of the political situation in Kenya and we don’t intend to play that role,” he said.
• He referred questions on whether the company’s systems would be used in fresh elections planned for October 17 to the IEBC.

Omoleye Omoruyi

Omoleye Omoruyi… an apprentice web/game developer, novelist, sensitive to happenings in the world. Meet him @Lord_rickie on Twitter/Instagram