Kenya’s Supreme Court has ruled the electoral system used during the 9 August General Election was not breached and the transmission of results was in order and reflected the will of the majority.

The Court threw out petitions that challenged the election of William Ruto as the fifth president of the country, citing interference with technology by third parties and hackers.

The Court said there was no evidence to suggest the system was hacked.

It also described some of the petitions as sensational and others as “hot air” allegations. As an example, the Court mentioned that some of the logs that were presented in court as evidence of a breach were not logs sourced from the IEBC server.

In relation to the KPMG report on the voter register in April 2022, the Court found that IEBC had addressed the issues raised in the report, including the removal of double entries and secure access.

“We are not persuaded by the allegation that the technology deployed by IEBC failed the standard of integrity, verifiability, security and transparency,” reads an excerpt from the Court’s ruling.

Petitions filed by Raila Odinga and Martha Karua allege there was interference in the transmission of results as numbers written on form 34a were intercepted and changed then sent on to the IEBC.

However, the Court said there was no evidence to support the claim.

Martha Koome, Supreme Court President said: “The scrutiny report shows that the original form 34a from the contested polling stations which were allegedly intercepted, were exactly the same as those on the public portal (IEBC’s portal) as the certified copies that were presented to this court.”

While some polling stations experienced technical difficulty with the Kenya Integrated Election Management System (KIEMS) kits to identify voters, the IEBC assured the Court that remedial measures were taken and that every eligible voter was identified by the manual register.