IEBC lawyer Mahat Somane claims 300 million Kenyans downloaded election results

IEBC lawyer Mahat Somane caused confusion among Kenyans after he claimed that some 300 million Kenyans accessed the IEBC portal and downloaded the forms used to tally the presidential election results.

Somane was explaining how strong the IEBC portal was, saying that the system was well equipped to handle as many download requests as possible.

According to the latest population census by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, the total population was 47,564,296.

IEBC lawyer Mahat Somane in court Pulse Live Kenya

“Our system is soo good because it's based on blockchain. It actually gives resources as required. If the 50 million Kenyans logged in to our portal, it will give them, without stuttering, any form they want and it will allocate resources based on how many people. Out of those 380 million people, 300 million were Kenyans who downloaded, who looked at the result,” he said.

A section of Kenyans said that lawyer was mistaken because the number exceeded Kenya’s total population.

Others following the Supreme Court petition argued that the lawyer could have meant to say that Kenyans accessed the portal 300 million times.

He denied that they were any chances that the Forms 34A could have been intercepted and altered.

"I want to inform the court that no one can upload the Form 34, they are only transmitted from the KIEMs kits by the presiding officers," he said.

“Those forms answer some jurisdiction questions before they are admitted into the portal. The portal verifies the polling station code as well as the serial number of the kit deployed to the specific polling station,” Somane stated.

At the time of publishing, there were no clarifications on the lawyer’s statements on the number of Kenyans who access the election results.