What Voters Need To Know About The IEBC KIEMS Kit

On Tuesday, August 9, voters will have the opportunity to interact with the Kenya Integrated Election Management System (KIEMS) kit provided by the election commission.

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) will deploy KIEMS, which features a biometric voter registration system that electronically captures voters’ facial images, fingerprints, and personal information.

To prevent impersonation, this information will be used on Tuesday to confirm a voter’s identity.

Additionally, the KIEMS kit contains a mechanism that will let presiding officers send data to observation centers using specifically set-up mobile devices.

The simultaneous transfer of totaled results to the constituency, county, and national IEBC tallying centers will be made possible thanks to the mobile devices.

Here are some things you need to know about the IEBC’s KIEMS kits before the exercise on Tuesday:

The electoral body estimates that 55,100 KIEMS kits have been delivered nationwide.

The kits feature inbuilt batteries with a high capacity and portable power banks that can last during the voting and transmission process.

“The KIEMS kit has an internal battery and two external batteries (power banks) that are fully charged before deployment. The three batteries have sufficient power to last beyond the voting and transmission period,” says IEBC.
The IEBC claims that the kits’ communication is encrypted and secured using 3G and 4G networks, even though the KIEMS voter identification feature is offline and does not require network connectivity.

Each kit has two cards, and in the voting places, the IEBC’s SIM cards are given network precedence.

“For purposes of electronic transmission of results, the KIEMS kit is fitted with both primary and secondary GSM sim cards to ensure continuity of the network in case one fails,” says IEBC.

According to IEBC, the SD cards used in the experiment are additionally contingency-encrypted for the protection of stored data. To verify the identification of the Presiding Officer handling the kit, digital signatures in the form of fingerprints are also used.