- Electronic transmission of presidential results stays. What disappears is the duty to stream results as they are announced.
Kenyans are used to watching election results arrive in real time. At the polling station, the presiding officer reads out the numbers and posts the result form.
Citizens, journalists and party agents then follow the tally as it builds. Parliament is now considering a change that would remove the legal duty to provide that live feed. Few things in Kenyan law carry more history than this one.
Why livestream exists
The election results livestreaming is a ‘child’ of the post-electoral chaos of 2007. In the disputed vote then, results were collected and announced behind closed doors, and the country watched as numbers changed between the polling stations and the final declaration.
The violence that followed killed more than 1,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands. The reforms that came afterwards shared one idea: if results are public at the source, they are harder to change when tallying them up.
Later amendments to the Elections Act built on that idea. The 2016 electoral reforms made it mandatory for the electoral commission to livestream election results from polling stations.
A later clause, Section 39(1G), added that the streamed results were for public information only.
However, this was overturned on April 6, 2018, then High Court Judge Chacha Mwita ruled that amendments to the Elections Act restricting live-streamed results to "public information only," meaning they could not form the basis for declaring final results, were unconstitutional.
This decision, later upheld by the Court of Appeal, found that restricting the legal weight of electronically streamed results undermined transparency and accountability in the electoral process.
The dispute centered heavily on that specific restriction rather than the concept of live-streaming itself.
The new Bill
The proposal sits in clause 22 of the Elections (Amendment) Bill. It deletes Section 39 of the Elections Act and replaces it.
Under the new text, the IEBC would still determine, declare and publish results immediately after polling closes, and results declared at the polling station shall be final.
Electronic transmission of presidential results stays. What disappears is the duty to stream results as they are announced.
The bill is jointly sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Aaron Cheruiyot and Senate Minority Leader Stewart Madzayo and came out of the National Dialogue Committee (NADCO), which was set up after the disputed 2022 election.
The Senate passed it in December 2024, and currently it is before the National Assembly.
The proposed law retains the electronic transmission of presidential election results within a two-hour window after the initial declaration of results to constituency and county tallying centers, candidates or their agents, and election observers
However, the bill still requires the electoral commission to physically deliver tabulated results to tallying centers, tally and verify results, and publish polling-station results on their public online portal.
Why it was introduced
Supporters of the current Bill say the televised live feed has no legal weight. Others go further, they state that reporting results is not the same as declaring a winner, true.
The IEBC has said it neither drafted nor sponsored the bill and that it could still choose to livestream results even if the law no longer requires it.
The new text also adds alternative transmission methods where electronic networks are unavailable, which matters in areas with poor connectivity.
Critics of the Bill, however, do not accept this reading. Former National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi says livestreaming is a common democratic norm across progressive democracies.
Others have termed the Bill “dangerous” in a country where presidential results are already highly suspected.
The National Assembly committee said Kenyans should be able to compare live-transmitted results with the final declared results to confirm accuracy. That comparison is the heart of the dispute.
Has the livestream stopped malpractice?
There has never been a time during which a case rested solely on the fact of a dispute pitting livestreamed results against the declared results.
In 2017, the illustrious case that disputed the presidential vote at the Supreme Court, and annulled the presidential election, rested mainly on how the IEBC ran its results process and technology, and not on a livestream.
However, it is widely acknowledged that a public feed gives agents, observers and citizens a record to check against later claims. It works as a deterrent and a tool for preventing disputes.
It is much harder to quote a number at the national tallying center that nobody saw at the polling station.
What it takes to pass
This is an ordinary bill, not a constitutional amendment. It needs a simple majority in the National Assembly, where the government side and its allies are strong.
If the Assembly changes the Senate’s version, the two houses must agree or go to a mediation committee. After that the President has 14 days to sign it or return it.
Critics have already said they will go to court and the court might have to decide the constitutionality of the current bill if need be.
The risks in a divided country
The timing of the Bill reeks of hidden motives all the way... The upcoming vote is set for 10th August 2027, and the political temperature in the country is already high.
Even if the IEBC keeps streaming voluntarily, a legal right is different from a favor. Without the legal duty, the electoral commission could drop the feed under pressure, or claim network trouble at the worst moment, it has happened before.
If a result is later disputed, the lack of a public record would feed rumors, the rumors would morph into a dispute, and disputes beget violence in Kenya. The 2007 crisis grew from exactly this kind of situation.
Is Kenya Richer or poorer without livestreaming?
On balance, Kenya loses more by removing a transparency tool that grew out of its worst election crisis, especially when trust in the IEBC is fragile.
Supporters of the bill say Kenya gains if it replaces a livestream feed with no legal force with a cleaner, verified system.
A stronger system and a streaming duty are not mutually exclusive. The country can have both, and the bill gives no clear reason why it cannot.
Who sponsors it, and who gains?
The two sponsors come from the broad-based government. Aaron Cheruiyot, Kericho senator, belongs to the UDA, while Stewart Madzayo, a Kilifi senator, is an ODM member.
That shared sponsorship reflects the “broad-based” politics of the moment, and it is why it is stated that the bill came out of the NADCO talks.
Whether they “stand to gain” is a matter of argument, not least in the light of government aligned leaders making reckless remarks about compromising the election results. Kakamega deputy governor Ayub Savula and Hamisi MP Charles Gimose spoke blatantly in May 2026 about manipulating budgets and ballot tactics, to win the vote for the incumbent.
Their brazen remarks, delivered at a Lugari delegates’ forum, sparked fears of a repeat of Kenya’s lowest electoral moments.
The Deputy President, Kindiki Kithure, and the Prime Cabinet Secretary, Musalia Mudavadi, have since come out to deny these allegations, but the rotten seed has already been sown.
The bottom line
Parliament can pass this bill, and the sponsors can show a technical case for it. But in Kenya, trust in elections is built in public.
If MPs want to simplify the law, they can keep the streaming duty, tighten the verification rules and still call it reform.
The cost of keeping the live feed is small. The cost of losing public confidence in 2027 could be high.