165 constituency and national tallying centres. 5.18.2.2 The Supreme Court also held that the failure by the IEBC to submit crucial documentation subject to a court-issued scrutiny order, left it with no choice but to draw an adverse inference against the IEBC. The rationale for this finding was that as section 39(1C) of the Elections Act had imposed an obligation on the IEBC to transmit the forms 34A from the polling stations, the conceded failure to transmit all the forms at the time of declaration of the presidential election results was in error. 5.18.2.3 On this basis, the Supreme Court held that the presidential elections were not conducted in accordance with the Constitution and annulled them, ordering that a fresh election be conducted. 5.18.3 The Election Laws (Amendment) Act No 34 of 2017 5.18.3.1 The annulment of the 2017 presidential election seemed to spurn the National Assembly into action as less than a month of the Supreme Court’s annulment of the election, a Bill was introduced in Parliament to amend, inter alia, sections 39 and 83 of the Elections Act. This was in an implied bid to change the test that would be used to govern the fresh presidential election. 5.18.3.2 The Bill was moved and passed through both houses of Parliament in record time. On submission to the President for assent, no action was taken by him leading to the Bill becoming an Act on the 14th day after its submission to the President, in line with Article 116 of the Constitution (and it taking effect on publication in the Kenya Gazette). Thus, the Election Laws (Amendment) Act No 34 of 2017 was enacted, making further changes to section 39 and 44 of the Elections Act. The 2017 Amendment Act sought to amend section 39 in the following ways: i. Requiring both electronic transmission and physical delivery of presidential results from the polling stations to the constituency tallying centre, and then to the national tallying centre. ii. Tallying and verifying the results received at both the constituency tallying centre and the national tallying centre. iii. Requiring the IEBC to verify that the transmitted results are an accurate record of the results tallied, verified and declared at the respective polling stations. iv. In cases of discrepancies between the transmitted and physical results, the IEBC would verify the results and that which was an accurate record of the results at the polling stations would prevail. v. Any failure to transmit or publish the results in an electronic format would not invalidate the results as declared by the presiding and returning officers at polling station and constituency tallying centres respectively. vi. IEBC was to establish, for purposes of public information only, a system of livestreaming of results as announced at polling stations. vii. Sub-section 2 of the Act (as it initially existed) was deleted and substituted with a provision permitting the IEBC Chair to announce the results of the presidential election before all constituency results had been transmitted if the Chair was satisfied that the results that had not been received would not affect the result of the election. BENCH BOOK ON ELECTORAL DISPUTE RESOLUTION