According to Senior Counsel Philip Murgor, unauthorised individuals tampered with the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) technology systems.
Murgor, who is representing Raila Odinga and Martha Karua in the Presidential Petition case before the Supreme Court, stated on Wednesday that the technology was manipulated to produce predetermined results.
“The technology deployed by IEBC for the conduct of the 2022 General Election completely failed the standards for a secure and transparent electronic voting system and thereby yielded aptly what has been described by my colleagues as non-verifiable, inaccurate and invalid results,” said Murgor.
“The technology was so inherently corrupted, manipulated and tainted that the results declared by Mr Chebukati cannot be, in an objective case, said to be representative of the true will of the Kenyan people.”
“It came out that somewhere, somehow, in the Karen suburb, there was a group of about 50 people who had access to the ICT systems of IEBC. These people were intercepting results before being uploaded to the public portal,” Murgor told the Supreme Court.
The IEBC backend was accessed by unauthorised personnel with full knowledge of the electoral commission, according to the lawyer who wants Supreme Court judges to overturn the results that saw William Ruto declared president-elect.
“The IEBC backend should have been accessed by only those legitimately authorised… There was a lack of security. The first instance is the operation and use of IEBC election materials and equipment by identified and unauthorised persons, and I am referring to the now-infamous Venezuelan nationals,” he submitted.
“Penetration by way of hacking and unauthorised grant of access to IEBC systems by known and unknown persons.”
“A result for [Dr. Ruto] was being arrived at well before the tally was in and each time work was being done to fit A and B into that result and at the end the result was forced onto Kenyans through a Form 34C,” he added.
Murgor informed the judges that a Form 34C had been produced prior to the final announcement.
“As of 12th August, 2022 at 15:48 hours, a Form 34C had already been generated. What was the business of anyone within that system generating a Form 34C? We were two days away from the final announcement,” he said.
The petitioners further claim that IEBC personnel, who were not gazetted for the purposes of restricted and accountable access to the system, were granted access to the system.
“In particular, the personal assistant of IEBC chairperson Wafula Chebukati, Dickson Kwanusu, is granted access. While we may not see the fingerprints of Chebukati in the ICT system, we see his palm, his much larger presence through the actions of his key aide. Indeed, when you study the system, you’ll find that Dickson Kwanusu performed a purported verification process of [forms] 34A 1,743 times,” said Murgor.
Murgor cited evidence from other forensic expert reports.
Some of the evidence presented suggests that some foreigners were given “super administrator” rights during the counting process. He also stated that there were six unauthorized users accessing the system.
“Four IEBC commissioners have stated categorically that the system was controlled by one person, Chebukati, and they were kept in the dark. [Commissioner Justus] Nyang’aya, who was in charge of ICT, was also shocked that foreigners were controlling the system, and had access during, and after the election,” he said.
“The technology applied by the IEBC for the conduct of the 2022 General Election completely failed the standards of a secure, transparent electronic voting system, and thereby yielded unverifiable, inaccurate and invalid results. This election was controlled from everywhere, except IEBC,” he said.
