Gov Mutai impeachment: Lawyers claim e-voting breached data protection laws
By David Nthua, August 28, 2025Kericho Governor Eric Mutai, through one of his lawyers, Peter Wanyama, has said the electronic voting system used by MCAs during his impeachment process breached data protection laws.
Speaking on the floor of the Senate on Thursday, August 28, 2025, Wanyama grilled County Assembly ICT boss Alex Korir on the security flaws that compromised the integrity of the vote.
Wanyama pointed out that the impeachment documents tabled before the Senate contained personal identification details of MCAs, including their ID numbers and Integrated Personnel and Payroll Database (IPPD) numbers, which were used as login credentials.
“The document at page 12 and 3, contains ID numbers of MCAs, do you confirm that under data protection, do you confirm that these are confidential credentials?
“For this system you say you created, the ID numbers were passwords to the e-voting, do you confirm? What was the username for an MCA, IPPD number?
“These IPPD numbers are the ones on page 4 of the document? And then, do you confirm that both ID Numbers and the IPPDs are publicly available to you as the Admin?
Sensitive data should never be exposed
“If you have the IPPD number of an MCA and the ID number of an MCA, would you have voted for that MCA? Like, if you have the link, the password, which is ID number and username, which is IPPD, would you have voted?” Wanyama pressed.
The lawyer further told senators that the County Assembly system failed to meet basic IT security standards.
According to him, sensitive credentials such as usernames and passwords should be hashed or encrypted, and any printout from an admin dashboard should not display full details.
But in reality, in basic data protection practice, a printed system output should show something like 33…33…3 or 1333 for usernames.
Passwords should never be visible or printable. Yet in this case, the entire ID numbers and IPPD credentials were displayed openly.
Doubts on the authenticity of the votes
The governor’s defence argued that these loopholes left the system open to manipulation and could explain claims that four MCAs who did not vote were nonetheless recorded as having participated.
The revelation sets the stage for a bruising battle in the Senate as Mutai seeks to invalidate his impeachment, citing both procedural and technological irregularities that could undermine the credibility of the vote.