Returning Officers are in charge of Presidential Election Results not the IEBC Chair
August 27,2026
Returning Officers
are in charge of Presidential Election Results not the IEBC Chair
The Returning Officers working with Independent
Electoral and Boundaries Commission at the Constituency level are the ones in
charge of the Presidential Election Results during a general election and not
the IEBC Chairperson, a lawyer has said.
Lawyer Willis Otieno says Presidential
elections are held in each of the 290 constituencies which are manned by
returning officers, adding that it is them who are fully in charge of
presidential elections and declaring its results.
Addressing the participants in
Kisumu during a meeting to mark 16 years of having a new constitution of Kenya
2010, Otieno said the role of the chairperson of IEBC is captured in article
138, {12} and the constitution says the chairperson is required by law to
declare the final result of the Presidential Election within seven days but
this does not make him the returning officer for the Presidential Election.
The Lawyer says the practice of the
former IEBC Chair Wafula Chebukati designating himself a returning officer for
presidential elections during the 2022 General Election was illegal.
He says there are no returns which
are made to the chairperson of the IEBC, adding that the IEBC chairperson's
role is purely to compute the outcome of the elections not the results.
He says in this case the
outcome means the winner of the elections where the winner is the person who
has gotten 50% plus one, and 25% of the votes cast in a minimum 24
counties across the country.
He says that the Presidential
elections are to be held in each constituency, adding that they are
constituency based, conducted by the returning officer for that constituency
and the returning officer’s decision on that election is final.
It can only be altered or changed by
a court order and the court that can handle that is only the Supreme Court of
Kenya.
“But
what we witness in Kenya is somebody creates a national tallying center and
makes himself the chairperson of the presidential elections, he makes
himself the chairperson of the presidential elections, with a view to
manipulate results. That is unconstitutional and on this category,
Kenyans must reclaim their sovereignty,” he further says.
He further adds that Kenyans
must demand that their presidential elections shall be done in their
constituencies by their returning officers from IEBC, and they shall tally
and announce those results at their respective polling stations and
constituency tallying centers.
On the next General Elections
Date, Otieno says the courts found a declaration of illegality and
constitutionality but the court gave IEBC time to correct the defect.
“ We believe what is going on is the
attempt to correct the defect, so when the next election is held that will be
part of correcting that defect.Our only issue with IEBC is why they chose next
year for the General elections, they should have corrected that defect within
even 60 days as would have been entered in the constitution from the date
of the court's declaration but they decided to choose to correct the defect
after one year,” he adds
He says his position is that
elections must be transparent and elections is not just the polling day and
IEBC owes it to Kenyans to ensure that any process they are undertaking in
terms of procuring of election materials and more so the technological
aspects of these elections is done in a transparent and accountable
manner.
“Those companies that they keep
inviting to conduct our elections, to support the technological aspects of our
elections, some of them have dubious backgrounds, there is that company that
they got from Venezuela that had even been banned from providing election
support in some countries because they engage in acts of voter fraud, some were
cited in the Philippines, in Venezuela, in some states in the United States of
America.So IEBC needs to move and ensure that whichever company they are going
to engage with is one that is above board. But more importantly, even the
deployment of those technological aspects of the elections should not be done
in secrecy,” he says.
He says Article 10 of the
constitution of Kenya 2010 talks about accountability and transparency as part
of principles of governance and IEBC is bound by those provisions.
“So they need to ensure that
political parties and observers, the
media and other stakeholders during the
elections are able to observe and to see the process they are going
through when selecting the service providers who will support these
aspects of the elections,” he further adds.
The lawyer points out that it should
not be an opaque process that now some commissioners or some officers of IEBC are seeing it as an opportunity to make
money for themselves and in the process undermine the sovereignty of the
people of Kenya.
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