The People’s Coalition on Electoral Reforms Demands Major IEBC Technology Reforms Ahead of 2027 Election
By Peace Muthoka
The People’s Coalition on Electoral Reforms has demanded sweeping changes to the way the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) procures, tests and deploys election technology, warning that weaknesses in the system could undermine public confidence in the 2027 General Election.
The coalition wants the electoral commission to abandon what it describes as a single-vendor, centralised approach and instead adopt a decentralised and modular election technology system that can be independently tested, audited and verified by political parties, candidates, observers and the public.
In a detailed statement on mandatory electoral reforms, the coalition said election technology must meet the constitutional requirements of being simple, accurate, verifiable, secure and transparent as Kenya prepares for the August 10, 2027 polls.
It argued that these standards should not be treated merely as broad constitutional principles but as specific technical requirements that IEBC must incorporate into its procurement, testing and deployment processes.
The demands come as IEBC continues preparations for the 2027 elections and reviews its technology procurement process. The Public Procurement Administrative Review Board recently ordered the commission to amend its tender for the Integrated Elections Management System after finding that some provisions and evaluation criteria were not sufficiently clear and objective. (Monitor)
The coalition said the procurement dispute should be used as an opportunity to rethink the architecture of the electoral technology rather than simply make adjustments to the existing tender.
“The cost is not the obstacle,” the coalition said, arguing that Kenya already operates digital systems capable of handling large volumes of transactions while providing users with immediate confirmation and traceability.
It cited mobile money services, the Judiciary’s electronic filing system, WhatsApp and KoboToolbox as examples of technology already used by Kenyans and public institutions to capture information, transmit records, provide confirmation and maintain an audit trail.
The coalition questioned why election technology should be less transparent or less verifiable than systems used for everyday commercial and government transactions.
“When a court litigant gets a better update than a candidate agent on election night — that’s not a technology problem. It’s a specification and procurement choice,” it said.
The group said every element of the election technology system should be designed to prevent a single electoral actor from altering results without detection.
It wants the system to ensure that no individual, including an IEBC official, can independently change an election result, while candidates and their agents receive the same information at the same time.
The coalition also wants results to be subjected to automatic arithmetic and voter-turnout checks, allowing discrepancies to be identified before they undermine the credibility of the final tally.
It said verification should not depend entirely on the presence of election agents, observers or journalists at polling and tallying centres.
“An IEBC official working alone, with no agent present and no observer accredited, should still be constrained by an election technology system that makes an unrecorded, unilateral change to a result technically hard — and if attempted, automatically detectable afterwards,” the statement said.
The coalition also pointed to lessons from previous elections, citing failures and disputes surrounding election technology in 2013, 2017 and 2022.
According to the group, the 2013 electronic voter identification and results transmission system experienced operational failures that forced a manual fallback. It said the 2017 presidential election exposed unresolved questions around results transmission and verification, while the 2022 election still generated disputes over server access and the relationship between IEBC and its technology providers.
The coalition further raised concerns about network coverage, failures in voter identification devices and gaps in the publication of results during previous elections.
However, IEBC has maintained that it is preparing technology for 2027 with lessons from previous elections in mind. Chairperson Erastus Ethekon has said the commission’s technology specifications were informed by Supreme Court directives, previous election experiences and feedback from field officers. He has also said no company had been awarded the technology tender when the claims emerged and that the procurement process remained open. (The Star)
Coalition wants modular election technology
At the centre of the coalition’s proposal is a demand for a decentralised and modular Integrated Electronic Electoral System.
The group argues that voter registration and deduplication, biometric identification, results transmission, candidate management and publication of election results should not necessarily be bundled into one contract with a single supplier.
Instead, it wants the various components procured as separate but interoperable modules to reduce dependence on one vendor and minimise the risk of a failure in one part of the system affecting the entire electoral process.
The coalition said Section 2 of the Elections Act already recognises the Integrated Electronic Electoral System as incorporating biometric voter registration, biometric voter identification and electronic results transmission.
It wants the system to serve all 290 constituencies and the diaspora vote through a decentralised results transmission architecture.
The group also called for transparent piloting of remote electronic voting for Kenyans living abroad.
Demand for public testing and audits
The coalition wants political parties and candidates to be directly involved in the testing, audit and certification of election technology before it is deployed.
It has demanded independent end-to-end testing and public simulations of the KIEMS kits, saying all devices must work reliably on election day.
The group wants every voter to be biometrically identified and each KIEMS kit to have adequate backup power.
It also wants the devices to display and transmit polling-station voter turnout to the relevant Constituency Tallying Centre.
In addition, the coalition wants KIEMS kits to be geofenced within 50 metres of their designated polling stations to discourage unauthorised movement of devices.
Every polling station, it said, should be properly gazetted, geo-referenced or geo-mapped so that its location can be independently established.
The group further wants polling stations to have reliable and tested internet connectivity, including backup satellite internet where required.
Election forms should also be machine-readable to make it easier to capture, compare and audit information.
Concerns over biometric data
The coalition has also raised concerns over the planned collection and management of biometric voter information.
It said IEBC should publish a Data Protection Impact Assessment and a detailed necessity analysis before migrating voter information or undertaking large-scale processing of biometric data.
The coalition specifically opposed any attempt to directly connect the voter register to the national identity database, arguing that placing the two systems in the same failure domain could expose both to the consequences of a technical failure or security breach.
It wants IEBC to disclose its technology policy and procurement specifications to political parties and other relevant stakeholders, including information on hardware, software source codes and server-hosting arrangements, subject to lawful security and data-protection safeguards.
Escrow arrangement proposed
The coalition is also calling for an escrow arrangement under which critical election technology assets would be held by a neutral Kenyan custodian.
It wants the arrangement to include clearly defined conditions for releasing source code and other critical materials, while ensuring IEBC retains control of encryption keys and administrative accounts.
It further wants technology builds to be witnessed and the system to remain operational even if a contracted vendor withdraws from the market.
Testing and certification, it said, should be mandatory, adequately funded and completed within the required timelines, with the findings published before election day.
Coalition sets deadlines for IEBC
The People’s Coalition has proposed a detailed timetable for implementing the reforms.
It wants IEBC to publish its election technology policy and procurement specifications by September 30, 2026.
By November 30, the commission should publish an amended tender and open the System Requirements Specifications for public comment.
The coalition wants the tender award, escrow arrangements, certification requirements, modular architecture and open-data provisions completed by December 2026.
It has further set January 31, 2027, as the deadline for publication of an architecture audit and deposit of source code with an independent escrow agent.
Voter-register migration should take place under a Data Protection Impact Assessment by February 2027, while full deployment, independent certification and penetration testing should be completed by June 10.
The final stage should involve a full-scale load test and public mock election by July 27, including testing of application programming interfaces, contingency measures and live status reporting.
Calls for public participation
The coalition also wants public participation to begin before IEBC awards the technology tender.
It has proposed that the commission publish the System Requirements Specifications for at least 30 days to allow members of the public, technology experts and other stakeholders to submit structured comments.
It wants standing technical working groups comprising civil society organisations, security researchers, disability-rights advocates and private-sector technology experts to be established at the beginning of every electoral cycle rather than only when disputes arise.
The coalition further wants IEBC to publish how it has dealt with public comments and allow independent observers to monitor user-acceptance testing and pre-certification exercises.
“Transparency that begins before procurement award, not after a dispute forces it,” the coalition said.
The technology debate comes at a critical stage in IEBC’s preparations for the 2027 election. The commission opened its international tender for the Integrated Elections Management System in August, covering supply, installation, testing, commissioning, support and maintenance of the system and related hardware. (People Daily)
The subsequent procurement review has already forced changes to the tender, with the Public Procurement Administrative Review Board directing IEBC to correct deficiencies before proceeding. (Monitor)
For the People’s Coalition, however, the issue goes beyond correcting tender documents.
It wants the technology used in the 2027 General Election to be designed from the outset around transparency, independent verification, data protection and public accountability.
The coalition argues that Kenya has already demonstrated its ability to run large-scale digital systems and should therefore demand the same level of reliability and transparency from the technology that will process and transmit the votes determining the country’s next government.
