Safina Deputy Leader Willis Otieno has dismissed concerns over possible rigging of Kenya’s 2027 presidential election, arguing that the country’s polling-station-based electoral system could make large-scale manipulation difficult.
Otieno said voters would be able to monitor, record and share results from their respective polling stations on election night, allowing Kenyans to establish the direction of the presidential contest before the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) completes the formal tally.
Speaking in remarks posted on his X account on Friday, Otieno argued that those planning to manipulate the election would be unlikely to publicly reveal how they intend to execute such a scheme.
He said claims about a possible “rigging machine” could instead be intended to create doubt and discourage public scrutiny, adding that anyone with an effective mechanism for manipulating the vote would be unlikely to openly discuss it.
Otieno maintained that he could not rule out attempts to interfere with the election but maintained that the structure of Kenya’s electoral system provides voters and political parties with an opportunity to independently monitor the counting process.
“They may be having something else to try to rig, but the way our elections are structured, they are done at the polling station. Kenyans will man their own polling stations. They will capture the results at the polling station by 9 p.m. on election night,” he said.
His comments come as the IEBC prepares for the 2027 General Election and reviews the infrastructure required to manage the vote.
The commission has projected that it will gazette 55,393 polling stations for the 2027 election, compared with 46,229 stations used in the 2022 General Election.
The IEBC also expects to register an additional 5.7 million voters, with young people who have attained voting age expected to account for a significant proportion of the new registrations.
In the 2022 election, the IEBC said it had a final register of 22,120,458 voters spread across 46,229 polling stations.
The commission's procedures require presidential results to be recorded at polling stations using Form 34A. The form records the votes obtained by each presidential candidate as well as the total number of valid votes cast at the station.
Safina Deputy Leader maintained that the results recorded at these stations could give Kenyans an early indication of the presidential election's direction.
The IEBC's experience from previous elections shows that polling-station results are also transmitted electronically.
The commission has previously stated that scanned images of Form 34A are transmitted from polling stations to tallying centres and displayed on a public portal.
The process is designed to provide multiple records of results.
According to IEBC documentation, copies of Form 34A are also made available at polling stations, while political party agents can raise complaints with presiding officers and escalate unresolved issues to returning officers.
The Supreme Court's 2022 presidential election judgment also considered the transmission of Form 34A results and the role of the IEBC in verifying and tallying results received from polling stations.
The court upheld President William Ruto's election after considering challenges that included claims concerning the technology used to transmit results and the tallying process.
Otieno nevertheless went further to claim that the polling-station results would demonstrate that Ruto had lost the 2027 election.
“It will show William Ruto has lost. We will sleep by midnight, knowing that Ruto has lost elections. What we’ll be going through now is the process of tabulation of those results formally,” he maintained.
His claim about the eventual election outcome is a political assertion and does not constitute a verified result, with the 2027 election yet to take place.
The IEBC's current election operations plan places the General Election on August 10, 2027.
It also provides for the identification and gazettement of polling stations, testing of election technology and the publication of polling stations without network coverage ahead of polling day.
Otieno's remarks therefore place emphasis on the distinction between counting votes at individual polling stations and the subsequent formal tallying of presidential results.
Under the existing system, the figures recorded at polling stations form the basis of the results transmitted to tallying centres.
For Otieno, the ability of voters, candidates and political party agents to independently record those figures could provide a means of tracking the presidential contest as the count progresses.