Counting of votes is currently underway at the Nyeri National Polytechnic tallying center following the close of polling stations yesterday.
Nyeri Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) County Returning Officer Annastacia Ndunge Mutua has told the press they are still waiting for at least half of the polling stations to deliver their results before they can authentically announce the final results.
Nyeri County has a total of 965 polling stations spread across the six elective constituencies.
“We closed our polling stations yesterday evening at 5 pm and embarked on the actual counting of the votes immediately. The counting of votes is still ongoing with at least 50 percent of the polling stations yet to deliver their ballot boxes at our County Tallying center here at the Nyeri National Polytechnic tally center,” she told KNA.
Mutua has however dismissed claims that some of the results for some of the elective seats have been finalized and insisted that the commission will only release the final figures after ballot papers for all the polling stations have been received.
She said the commission hopes to get the final figures towards the close of business today.
“It is too early to talk about who is leading in these elections across all the elective seats until we manage to tally all the results from across the polling stations. We therefore wish to urge members of the public to be patient and give our officers ample time to finalize the counting of votes across all the polling stations before they can be announced officially. As for the Presidential vote, we still have at least seven days to finalize the tallying and collating of the individual candidate’s results,” she explained.
A low poor voter turnout marked the start of voting in Nyeri county yesterday as Kenyans went to polling stations to elect leaders who will represent them for the next five years.
A total of 46,229 people from Nyeri had registered to participate in this year’s elections which political pundits had hyped as one of the most hotly contested in Kenyan history.
Analysts had predicted a clean sweep for the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) with Deputy Presidency Dr. William Ruto who is poised to easily trounce former Prime Minister Raila Odinga who is running on Azimio la Umoja One Kenya coalition ticket.
Ruto is contesting for the presidency as a first time under the Kenya Kwanza coalition that brings together 14 other parties including the Amani National Congress led by Musalia Mudavadi and Ford Kenya party led by Moses Wetangula.
A spot check by KNA at four different polling stations recorded voter apathy in the county, which could directly impact the fate of the two leading presidential contenders in the Mount Kenya region.
More than 22 million Kenyans were expected to troop to the 46,229 polling stations across the country with voter turnout placed at around 70 percent.
By Samuel Maina and Wangari Mwangi
