Four major risks Kenya is overlooking as 2027 polls beckon

Proposed amendments to the Elections Act understandably provoked intense political and public scrutiny this week. South Africa’s local elections next week and recent Tanzania and Brazil general elections lead me to ask whether we are focusing our attention on the right risks.

Four significant risks are being overlooked. Thursday marked the first anniversary of Tanzania’s most violent and least competitive election since multiparty politics returned in 1992. Twelve months on, the death toll from the post-election crackdown remains disputed, ranging from 518 to 3,000. CHADEMA presidential candidate Tundu Lissu and many others remain in pre-trial detention or have disappeared. Vigils by the diaspora, foreign missions and Kenyan activists honoured the dead and renewed calls for constitutional reform.

After years of lawfare against opposition parties, media, NGOs and citizens critical of the CCM administration, it is legitimate to argue Samia Suluhu Hassan did not secure a mandate to govern. Meanwhile, Tanzania continues to violate Kenyan national sovereignty. Pro-Tanzanian agents chose to mark the re-election with yet another act of transnational repression.

On the eve of the anniversary, CHADEMA youth organiser Twaha Mwapaiya was abducted on Kenyan soil, the third cross-border abduction in three years. Despite the seriousness, both governments remain silent again.

Some 10,000 kilometres west of Nairobi, Brasil’s October 4 General Election and October 25 presidential run-off offer a better model for Kenya. Despite heavy rains and transport hitches, 128,236,074 people voted across 499,000 polling stations. The results were counted and announced in hours, not days. Each polling station publicly displayed its equivalent of Kenya’s Form 34A. That three million more voters voted in the run-off demonstrated public confidence in the electoral process.

Although Flavio Bolsonaro may still contest the results, electoral authorities had transparently shared technology source codes, electoral and biometric software and cyber-security testing results with all political parties and independent monitors, experts and researchers. Both parties and voters could scrutinise the process. Lula da Silva begins his second term with a clear mandate to govern.

Next week, 29.2 million South Africans head to the polls. Their electoral system has been independently audited, and political parties can remotely monitor the results platform. Like Brasil, South Africa demonstrates that electoral trust is earned through transparency, not secrecy.

This week’s parliamentary and public debate in Kenya focused on results livestreaming, mandatory access to the servers, among other provisions that should harmonise the Election Act with the revised Political Parties Act and the National Dialogue Committee consensus reached after 2022. While important, four risks that threaten next year’s elections are not being resolved.

The IEBC is yet to disclose how many adults are eligible to be voters. This is important given the controversies surrounding the 2019 census in North Eastern Kenya. The voters’ register has not been independently audited or verified, and key data on voter distribution across polling stations remains unavailable. Without this information, how can mass voter registration efforts be targeted fairly without disadvantaging some constituencies?

We also need transparency on the number and geolocation of polling stations. This can't be difficult to declare. The Education Ministry has this information already. The KPMG 2022 report identified critical discrepancies in the number of polling stations. Publishing this data alongside voter registration figures would enable independent scrutiny. Election fraud rarely happens only on polling day. We need these safeguards well before the election to prevent voter suppression and voter inflation.

Lastly, for the electoral technology to be beyond reproach, the IEBC must demonstrate that there will be no unauthorised access to the Elections Portal or intermediary servers able to intercept and manage the speed and integrity of the Form 34As uploading to the portal. By law now, polling station results are final, and KIMS must transmit directly to the portal.

The time for public assurances is running out. The next few months will make the difference between our election going the way of Tanzania or Brasil. If Brasil and South Africa can do independent audits, open-source code, and pre-election data release with larger electorates and territories, why can’t we?