On Tuesday, August 16, four IEBC commissioners disowned the presidential results announced by the national returning officer Wafula Chebukati.
IEBC vice chairperson Juliana Cherera, Irene Masit, Justus Nyang’aya, and Francis Wanderi said that the summation of percentages of votes awarded to each of the four presidential candidates exceeded the maximum 100 percent mark.
“This summation gives us a total of 100.01%. This translates to approximately 142,000 votes which will make a significant difference in the final results,” the commissioners said in a statement read by Juliana Cherera.
In the results, President-elect William Ruto got 7,176,141 votes representing 50.49% of the final vote while former Prime Minister Raila Odinga got 6,942,930 translating to 48.85%.
Agano’s David Mwaure polled 31, 987 (0.23%) whereas Roots Party of Kenya candidate George Wajackoya garnered 61,969 (0.44%) bringing the total percentage to 100.01%.
Kivumbi.co.ke has since established that 0.01 % of the 14,213,027 total votes cast translates to around 1,400 votes extra votes.
This elicited heated debate where Kenyans questioned the academic qualification of the IEBC officials prompting the commission’s chair Wafula Chebukati to clarify how the summation exceeded the 100% mark.
In a lengthy statement on Wednesday, August 17, IEBC boss Wafula Chebukati said that the contentious 0.01% difference in the aggregation of presidential results was due to rounding off.
He termed the 0.01% increase in the total percentage by the four rebel IEBC commissioners as “false and misleading.”
Basically, the error was brought about by rounding off each of the presidential candidate’s percentage to two decimal places.
“The alleged 0.01% percent increase in the presidential election results raised by the four commissioners, namely Juliana Cherera, Francis Wanderi, Justus Nyang’aya, and Irene Masit is false and misleading. Please refer to the attached tabulation that provides a scientifically accurate analysis. We urge Kenyans to interact with these results and make an objective judgment,” Chebukati said.
The presidential results percentages for each candidate were as follows before rounding off to 2 decimal places.
William Ruto- 0.504894943
Raila Odinga- 0.488490594
Wajackoyah George- 0.004360014
David Mwaure- 0.002250541
The figures were first rounded off to four decimal places then again rounded off to 2 decimal places before being converted into percentages by multiplying by 100 to arrive at
William Ruto- 50.49
Raila Odinga- 48.85
Wajackoyah George- 0.44
David Mwaure- 0.23
When added together, the figure exceeds the required 100%, giving rise to what is referred to as truncation error, in this case, 100.01%.
