The first consignment of presidential ballot papers for the August 8 General Election arrived in the country Monday night/MOSES MUOKI

Distribution of ballot papers to start Wednesday

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission was on Wednesday set to start distributing ballot papers to all the 290 constituencies.

The Commission’s Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Marjan Hussein said the distribution will be carried out by the Postal Corporation of Kenya as the main logistics company.

“They have been given the responsibility of ensuring the ballot papers go to all the destinations and this will be done under tight security,” he told journalists at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport Tuesday night when he received the last batch of presidential ballot papers from Dubai.

Marjan confirmed that all the packages were tamper proof as they had confirmed the number of pallets received as a true representation of what was ordered.

“I can confirm to the public that the process is going on very well. This is the last batch we are receiving for the presidential ballot papers as well as for the Member of the County Assembly (MCA),” he said.

The Commission plans to have finished distributing the ballot papers to all counties by August 4 or 6 at the latest, ahead of the Tuesday elections.

“As the IEBC we are ready for the elections,” he assured.

The first consignment of presidential ballot papers for the August 8 General Election arrived in the country Monday night.

IEBC was Wednesday also set to conduct a live simulation of the election results transmission system countrywide to test its capability ahead of next week’s elections.

The simulation will be held at the national tallying centre at Bomas of Kenya, as well as all the 47 county tallying centres, starting at 3pm.

The system will be used to transmit election results during the elections, with the aim of ensuring all goes as planned in ensuring a credible and transparent election, in the wake of counter accusations from Jubilee and their National Super Alliance (NASA) competitors.

In Nairobi, the test will be done at the county tallying centre in Kasarani Sports Stadium, while Bandari College in Mombasa will be the county’s tallying centre,

In Mombasa, the county tallying centre is at Bandari College while in Kwale County the national tallying centre is at the Kenya School of Government in Matuga. In Kilifi, the national tallying centre is at Pwani University while Tana River’s tallying centre is at the Mau Mau Memorial High School.

The exercise was set for Monday but was postponed following the discovery of the body of the Commission’s ICT Manager Chris Msando who had been missing since Friday.