A new Bill is seeking to bar the IEBC from livestreaming election results from polling stations
A new Bill is seeking to bar the IEBC from livestreaming election results from polling stations
The IEBC advances a draft law to eliminate the public livestreaming of 2027 election results, sparking fears of a rollback on democratic transparency.
The electoral body has signaled its intent to completely eliminate the real-time public livestreaming of presidential poll results.
According to a draft 2026 electoral law currently under institutional review, the statutory requirement for the IEBC to broadcast polling station results to a centralized, public-facing portal as they are declared will be deleted.
The maneuver threatens to dismantle the very mechanism that stabilized the fraught 2022 elections, setting the stage for a vicious legislative battle over democratic accountability.
The draft legislation targets the technological core of Kenya’s result transmission framework. Historically, the law compelled returning officers to instantly upload scanned copies of Form 34A—the primary document recording final tallies at individual polling stations—to a public digital repository.
This allowed media houses, civil society, and the general public to conduct independent, parallel tabulations.
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By deleting this requirement, the IEBC will restrict access to raw electoral data until the final, aggregate tallies are officially certified at the national tallying center.
Proponents of the amendment argue that parallel tabulations by unverified third parties generate public confusion and incite premature declarations of victory.
Critics, however, view the blackout as a catastrophic regression that invites opaque tampering and algorithmic manipulation in the dark.
The legislative pivot was illuminated during high-level strategic discussions spearheaded by the National Council on the Administration of Justice (NCAJ).
The closed-door sessions, designed to harmonize inter-agency coordination ahead of the 2027 cycle, brought together the apex of Kenya’s judicial and investigative branches.
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