Are official election results processed by an electronic tabulation system?

As part of the strategy to secure the integrity of results recorded at the 2011 General Elections, the Commission refined the process for managing results of elections by introducing a hybrid of manual and electronic procedures.

The manual procedure prescribes that:

a) All result sheets must be duly and correctly completed.

b) All declared results must be displayed at the polling units and collation centers using the prescribed forms.

c) All result forms must be arranged, batched and transferred to the state office for safe- keeping not later than 48 hours after each poll.

The electronic procedure required that, at least for the presidential election, collation at the State Collation Centre and the Presidential Collation Centre were subjected to accuracy checks by using an excel spread sheet application to eliminate computation errors. All results were projected on a screen and publicly displayed as they were announced.

In order to prevent tampering with the manual copies of the results in transit, e-copies of the results were transmitted electronically from the State Collation Centres to the Presidential Returning Officer using a secure email address. Results in all cases were subsequently placed on the Commission’s website in compliance with the requirement for the publication of results of elections.