Maraga says the country is sleepwalking into a catastrophic rigging of the 2027 General Election

David Maraga calls for urgent electoral reforms, warning of possible 2027 election rigging. [Courtesy]

The People’s Coalition on Electoral Reforms has declared a state of absolute national electoral integrity vigilance for the next 288 days, since the country is sleepwalking to a catastrophic rigging of the August 2027 General Election.

Former Chief Justice David Maraga accused the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) of acting as an unaccountable rogue procurement cartel and Parliament of betraying the public trust bestowed upon them by the People of Kenya due to narrow executive subservience for the benefit of President William Ruto.

Maraga told Journalists in Nairobi that the Coalition has submitted amendments to both the National Assembly and the Senate which seek to make it clear that Votes must be counted, declared and published immediately at the polling station to avoid manipulation.

“Presiding Officers must electronically transmit actual voter turnout data every single hour on election day; this data will stream continuously on an open public portal, mathematically eliminating the classic fraud of injecting 'ghost voters' after polls close,” said Maraga.

He said that Constituency Returning Officers plus the Returning Officer for the diaspora vote—who are the true corporate hands of the Commission—will tally results locally, publish them directly to the public web portal and live-stream the physical declaration onto giant screens for public viewing at the constituency tallying centres.

The former Chief Justice said that the Centralized head-office servers with write privileges or alter access are completely outlawed, with the IEBC Chairperson and Commissioners being confined to an open public space in Nairobi.

He said that their role will simply be to stream, display, and aggregate the 290 independent constituency totals plus the diaspora vote via secure read-only media APIs before the Chairperson can declare the result of the Presidential Election in line with Article 138.

“Should we get anything short of these proposed amendments as highlighted over the next 288 days, Kenyans should be alive to the painful truth that President Ruto, with the aid of Parliament, with the ACQUISCENCE of the IEBC, is planning to rig the 2027 General Elections,” said Maraga.

The United Green Movement Party Leader said all the agencies that may harbour the intention of rigging the elections must be stopped and that they cannot wait for President Ruto to rig the elections in his favour and that everything should be done to stop that.

Saboti MP Caleb Amisi said that the Lack of trust among the political parties and players, together with suspicions of electoral fraud, has in the past catalysed polarisation and triggered bloody ethnic conflicts in nearly every election cycle, especially when an incumbent is seeking re-election.

The Party Leader of the People’s Renaissance Movement said that Kenya has made some strides with regard to electoral reforms, but even with these many strides, the fear of manipulation of the election results and interference with the integrity of the electoral process generally persists.

“The people's representatives are expected to enact only laws that they consider to be reasonable for the purpose for which they are enacted; that is why the People’s Coalition on Electoral Reforms still pushes for the amendment, which was questioned and decided in the Maina Kiai case,” said Amisi.

The Saboti MP said that according to the Kiai case, the purpose or the effect of the implementation of section 39(2) and (3) of the Elections Act, which has since been retained by Parliament in the law they passed last week and regulations 83(2) and 87(2)(c), infringes the provisions of the Constitution.

He said that it will be recalled that the High Court annulled the aforesaid Section 39(2) and (3) of the Elections Act and regulations 83(2) and 87(2)(c) on 7th April, 2017 and that one would have expected the concerned institutions, including the National Assembly and the IEBC, to either comply with the determination of the court or, if aggrieved, to challenge it at the Court of Appeal.

Amisi told Journalists that the court stated that, as a matter of fact, an amendment to section 39 is intended to align it with Articles 81, 82, 86, 101, 136 and 138 to provide for procedure at the general elections, especially the role of the IEBC to conduct the elections, determine, declare and publish the results.

“To put into context this current issue on Electoral reforms, we would like to remind the nation that in the Maina Kiai case the court was invited to consider whether section 39(2) and (3) of the Elections Act and Elections (General) Regulations 83(2) and 87(2)(c) as currently in statute, are inconsistent with Articles 86 and 138(3) of the Constitution and to issue appropriate declarations,” said Amisi.

The Saboti MP said that the court had stated that Elections determine political winners and losers; electoral processes, from voter registration through to declaration of results, have long been targeted for manipulation and are the foremost cause of electoral conflicts.

Amisi told Journalists that Such manipulation or, sometimes even the mere threat of it, weakens public confidence in democratic processes, in the courts, security agencies, in the legislature and, in the end, erodes the legitimacy of governance institutions.

The Party Leader of the Democratic National Alliance, Godfrey Kanoti, said that concerns about the counting, tallying, transmission and announcement of results are not new in Kenya and that there have been many proposals since the 1992 Multi-Party elections that have not been effectively implemented.

Kanoti said that the Joint Parliamentary Select Committee on the Matters Relating to the IEBC in August 2016, through the Kiraitu/Orengo Report, considered the provisions of Articles 86 and 138 of the Constitution and section 39 of the Elections Act and the Regulations, the same provisions that were the subject of Maina Kiai's appeal.

“There was near unanimity in opinion that since the first level of declaration of results is at the polling station, those results should be final and should only be challenged in a court of law; that the form filled out for the declaration of results at the polling station should be the primary election form,” said Kanoti.

 He argued that all other forms can only be tallies of the final results rather than confirmation forms; that, for those reasons, the stakeholders recommended to the Committee that regulations 76, 77 and 78 be amended to provide for conclusive determination of ballots at polling stations.