A report from the scrutiny of ballot boxes in some polling stations as ordered by the Supreme Court shows a few issues.
For instance, six out of the 41 polling stations that the Supreme Court ordered to be scrutinised did not have Form 34A Book 2, a report by the Supreme Court Registrar Letizia Wachira has shown.
Notably, form 34A Book 2 was not supposed to be used in the August 9 general election since the parties in the polls agreed to use only Form 34A Book 1 to record the presidential results, but it had to be intact in the ballot boxes.
According to the report, however, 26 scrutinised polling stations had Form 34A Book 2 intact in the ballot boxes while nine electoral areas used Form 34A Book 2 with varying numbers of carbonated copies.
"Some Returning Officers explained the absence of Form 34A Book 2 by indicating that the presiding officers used them instead of Form 34A Book 1. In such cases, the team verified the information by looking for Form 34 A Book 1 to confirm if it was indeed intact for purposes of accountability," Wachira indicated in her report.
She further said some Returning Officers explained that some presiding officers mistook the two books because they did not understand the procedure.
"Other returning officers had no explanation for the absence of Form 34 A Book 2. They indicated that they had just learned of the anomaly together with the scrutiny.
"The Kiambaa Constituency Returning Officer explained that her presiding officer used Book 2 because he had spoilt Book 1. They, however, did not present the spoilt Form 34A Book 1 for the team’s scrutiny, and the PSD did not indicate that the Form 34A Book 2 had been spoilt," she added.
Form 34A arithmetic errors
The report further revealed that in Majengo Primary School polling station 2 of 2, certified Form34A was not found inside the ballot box.
When the recount was conducted, it was found that 222 votes were cast at the station with Raila Odinga garnering 139 and William Ruto got 83.
In Kapsuser Primary School polling station 2 of 3, there was a computation error noted in Form 34A.
At the station, Raila garnered seven votes against Ruto's 431 but the presiding officer recorded 429 total votes cast.
A recount, however, found that there were actually 438 total votes cast at the station which is in line with what the two top presidential candidates got.
