Uchaguzi Wednesday Report

Uchaguzi has now received over 7000 reports from a healthy mix of sources, with roughly 63% coming in via SMS, 4% from Twitter, and  24% from other web sources such as newspaper articles. We are also pleased with the diversification of authors, with the largest number of reports coming in from Kenyan citizens, followed by reports submitted by the Uchaguzi field observers, and additional submissions from the 700 trained field observers affiliated with our partner CRECO. The more eyes on the situation, the brighter the spotlights, and higher ultimate transparency.

Out of these submissions, positive events continues to be the largest category with 425 submissions, while only 104 verified as security issues. The second largest category at this point is voting issues at 325, which is actually light for a voter turnout that appears to be now approaching north of 15 million. Thus, the picture of yesterday’s events is that the physical voting process was generally orderly and void of any cataclysmic acts of crime and violence.

We continued to monitor and fact check the map today, and are confident that the Kenyan citizens will intelligently and calmly engage this next election tabulation phase of building our nation. As one citizen reminded us this morning “Mombassa is safe and calm…we should all desist from spreading rumors”. Looking at the graph above, counting irregularities were by far the largest amount of reports submitted in the early hours of today in Nairobi and migori counties,  with many of the reports attributing these irregularities to the challenges of using the KIEMS system, observers not being allowed into during the counting process, late tallying of results due to technical issues and party agents refusing to sign off the final results declaration forms.

Figure 1: Counting and Results Reports per County

We also received an interesting amount of reports around protests over declared results, irregularities with transportation of ballot boxes and the of delays in  IEBC officials to announce results at the designated times.  With some of the posts submitted, it was important to escalate the matter for immediate action. We were able to refer approximately 136 cases and reach out to the election observers on the ground to take action.

Of the reports received depicting security challenges throughout the country, about one third described political party agents "acting in a hostile manner", perpetuating "dangerous speech", and instigating "mobilization towards violence".

Figure 2: Frequency of Surveys Types Submitted

       

On a positive note we did receive a number of positive reports from across the country that pointed out citizens excitement to exercise their democratic right to vote and affirmed their desire for peace and patriotism above all else as one reports perfectly stated “if you are a kenyan let us chose to have a peaceful election 'Amani ni tamu”.     

Analysis conducted by Hazel Mugo and Kevin McMahon