NAIROBI—Millions of Kenyans voted Monday in a tense but largely peaceful contest to elect a new president and local officials who will preside over East Africa’s largest economy. Delays in the release of Kenya’s election results due to technical glitches prompted jitters late on Monday among politicians and stirred memories of 2007 elections, when disputed results triggered a national crisis.
Kenyans were on tenterhooks as early results were broadcast on television after a day of polling which passed off overwhelmingly peacefully but with a string of deadly incidents on the coast and explosions in two northeastern towns. But the flow of results suddenly stopped updating once they reached about 1.3m of an expected 10m or so votes, raising alarm among party agents and election officials. The agents had been repeatedly receiving failure notices when they tried to send local results via a new telephone-based system to a national tallying centre.
