14 enigmatic Returning Officers (ROs) are in charge of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission’s (IEBC) Integrated Database Management System (IDMS) according to an audit of the system.
KPMG’s examination revealed that there were over 2 million unidentified voters on the digital voters’ register.
According to the study, the unidentified Returning Officers had “superuser access privileges” and could “move, delete, insert, trigger, truncate, and edit the voters register at whim.”
In the audit, KPMG also learned that the 14 returning officers had collaborated with 290 IEBC officers in charge of the constituencies despite not being gazetted.
The audit also showed that the “digital” ROs had access to the IDMS voter registry and were backed by 513 generic accounts in the IDMS as opposed to 9 real accounts.
According to KPMG, the unknown ROs are referred to as “Embakasi South clerks” and “IT users” in the IEBC’s official Integrated Database Management System.
“The system contained two RO accounts with the names Balambala-ro and Mbalambala-ro. One Balambala alone is gazetted.
While other persons registered twice in past elections, these voters registered using duplicate or fraudulent documents.
According to The Standard, the audit report also stated that “the personnel had the higher privileges in IEBC IDMs to move, amend voter particulars, and deactivate deceased voters and the constituency.”
Auditors also discovered that new voters were unexpectedly reregistered during the cleaning of the voter list.
As required by IEBC regulation, the IDMS database was not configured to delete dormant accounts after 90 days, which KPMG found made it simpler for people who had left the IEBC to access the system.
