The Election Commission (EC) said today that reporting of the unofficial election results, using the Rapid Reporting system and released on election night, were accurate although attempts to hack the system were detected.

The EC’s Office said that the Rapid Reporting system was jointly developed by the EC’s Office and the Digital Government Development Agency, a public organization, for use by election officials at different polling units to speed up the reporting of local counts to the EC’s central office after polls close.

During the initial stage of reporting, the EC said that there were some discrepancies in the information due to the fact that a huge amount of data was streamed simultaneously. However, the system developer rectified the problem immediately and the central database was not affected.

The EC admitted that there had been attempts to hack the Rapid Report system, but they failed due to the system’s built-in security measures, adding that the system had not failed, as wrongly reported by some media.

The EC’s office accepted that announcement of unofficial poll results was slow due to technical difficulties, adding that unofficial poll results must be based on a 95% completion of the vote count.