We must reform our electoral system now

The ‘stolen election’ narrative in the US following the declaration of Joe Biden as the president-elect is familiar in Kenya. In fact, the BBI process was premised on the tensions, violence and killings that happen around election time in Kenya. The BBI effort was meant to kill this narrative. But, the final report of the BBI process, although reasonably well presented with facts and concrete proposals, is quite empty on the all-important question of one-man-one vote principle.

We just witnessed Americans vote both through the popular and the college vote. The resulting outcome can be skewed by, arguably, polarising characters like outgoing President Donald Trump to favour their desired outcomes. That is if he does not change his mind and concede defeat, or if the courts unjustifiably overturn Biden’s ticket to the White House.

For long, I could not make sense of the way the college vote works in the US, but with the outgoing president ranting over the ‘stolen election’, I now understand just a bit more. It is worth reflecting on how this college vote serves as a buffer for the popular vote even though as we saw in 2016, a popular candidate can lose an election as did Hillary Clinton to Trump.

The college vote does not generate violence, nor does it cure sharp divisions. But it does provide credibility to a process that has kept the most enduring democracy in the world going. Yet, the outgoing president has literally attacked that very process, hence creating doubt on its outcome. 

Contentious outcomes

We know that the electoral process from civic education, enrolment of voters to announcing the results must be credible for peace and democracy to prevail. If the process is faulty, the results will most definitely be unreliable. What President Trump has done is to plant seeds of discontent among his supporters, that the process is faulty. Consequently, the outcome is unreliable.

Of course, his ardent supporters will have to be considerably patriotic to avoid getting radicalised or taking as a matter of life and death this kind of contentious outcomes. We have evidence. In 2007, we ran a campaign that led to loss of life, displacement of people and loss of property. The Kriegler Commission that was tasked with auditing the report found out that the electoral process was so faulty, that no reliable outcome could be generated. Because of this, we were advised that a coalition government would cure our pain at the time. As a result, the ‘nusu mkate’ government was shared between President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga. Unfortunately, the makeshift government did not prove a reasonable cure in the long term.

Legitimate outcome

Fast forward to 2017. We ran an election whose first outcome was nullified by the Supreme Court on the basis of a faulty process. The results could not be relied upon to bestow power on the candidate who had majority votes. The repeat presidential election created a more dampening outcome. The country got into a tense moment characterised by ethnic hatred and economic meltdown. Thankfully, two candidates whose support bases were digging in for a violent showdown chose peace over chaos. As far as we know, that is the genesis of the famous Handshake and the BBI process.

How fast we forget! We are headed to 2022 General Election without even minimal – if at all – change in the process that cannot produce a legitimate outcome. Based on our experiences since the 1990s, we can draw undisputed conclusions that our electoral process is too porous for political manipulation.

The electoral process allows political candidates to buy and sell voters to bidders like sheep in a marketplace. The primaries in political parties are largely a sham. Further, the election campaigns are used to dish out money to yearning voters without realising that this is one sure way of corrupting the outcome of an election.

Vote buying and manipulating cast votes at the counting centres are regular claims. The high number of contested cases from MCA to presidential that are lodged in courts tell us that something is wrong with our electoral process. Even at the county level, the hatred between clans on the basis of how to elect a candidate is ever increasing.

How we never address this universal suffrage method is a mystery. Whom does it benefit if we can historically see that every election period tensions rise, ethnic division increase and uncertainty over peace sweeps through the country? We should sober up and treat the symptoms with the right treatment.

-Dr Mokua is Executive Director, Loyola Centre for Media and Communication