The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) chairman Wafula Chebukati has assured the public that they should not panic over the difference in the transmission of presidential results across different TV stations.
Earlier on there were growing concerns among Kenyans relating to the transmission of presidential results across different TV stations.
Some took to social media platforms to air out their frustration, accusing certain media houses of not transmitting accurate presidential results.
This is the first time in Kenya’s election history an election body has allowed the media houses, politicians, members of the public and other interested parties to independently keep track of the August General Election by sourcing data from the electoral body.
IEBC directive enabled media houses to set up their tallying centres to transmit the results which have resulted in a variation on different presidential results being aired by media houses.
These variations outcomes much to the dismay of Kenyans who are now conflicted about which TV station to trust.
David Omwoyo Media Council of Kenya (MCK) CEO has also advised the members of the public not to panic over the variations in presidential results.
“The Council confirms that the results being projected are all from the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) though the sequencing by different media houses is from different voting areas,” said Omwoyo in a statement on Wednesday.
The statement further explains that it is only natural for different TV stations to display contrasting results since the sequencing of votes can vary depending on how the said stations receive results from different parts of the country.
Mr Omwoyo added that MCK is currently exploring ways to ensure that all TV stations announce the same results simultaneously.
“The Media Council of Kenya is in consultation with Media Owners and Editors to find an urgent solution to this to ensure Kenyans receive synchronised results. Media houses have previously executed joint production with remarkable success on such matters of national interest,” he said.
He likewise reminded Kenyans that official presidential election results will only be announced by IEBC once tallying is concluded.
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Chebukati added that these variations of presidential results transmitted by media houses are based on the manpower of each media house.
“Every media house has a different manpower capacity and thats why the time taken to process data from IEBC portal , the faster a media house access and process the IEBC uploads data on our platform hence the variations of the transmitted results.”
Owed to IEBC’s unpredictability in uploading the results on its platform and the randomness media houses use to download the said data, without taking into account manpower and speed of processing the said data, the results will be different on most occasions.
