‘Rejected votes bringing run-off closer’

By Geoffrey Mosoku and Peter Opiyo

NAIROBI; KENYA: The growing number of spoilt votes may push the country into a run-off between Coalition for Reforms and Democracy’s (CORD) Raila Odinga and Jubilee’s Uhuru Kenyatta.

By the time of going to Press, the number of rejected votes stood at 315,220 out of the 5,318,094 votes cast.

On Tuesday, University of Nairobi Political Science lecturer Adams Oloo said the indications of a run-off were strong, saying the spoilt vote will be a factor.

“I don’t want to say that it will be the only factor but if it hits over 5 per cent, definitely it will be a major factor,” said Oloo.

The votes were from about 10,000 of the 33,400 polling stations. The rejected votes stood at an estimated 5 per cent and the other candidates may share another 5 per cent.

The number of rejected votes is likely to go up with analysts saying it may end up at over 600,000 votes or more. This will leave Uhuru and Raila with 90 per cent to fight for.

The results that had trickled in showed Raila was trailing Uhuru at about 42 per cent to 53 per cent.

The two coalitions have been keenly following the numbers as they trickled in, which interestingly were more than what the other six presidential candidates were scoring from the preliminary results.

On Tuesday, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission ( IEBC) Chairman Issack Hassan attributed the rejected votes to colour coding of the ballot boxes that was not pronounced, hence making some voters cast their ballot papers in the wrong boxes.

Audit of results

He said, for instance, the colours blue and green were not distinct leading to confusion during voting.  He, however, said an audit would reveal the exact cause of the rejected votes, saying the commission’s take was based on the mock elections conducted a few weeks before the polls.

“During simulation there were cases where voters were casting their vote in the wrong ballot boxes.  The colour coding seemed not to be good enough, but these are things we need to audit,” said Hassan.

“Due to the complexity of this election, there is a higher number of spoilt votes than we would have wished to see. The IEBC will have a clear count of the spoilt votes at the end of the exercise,” he told journalists at the National Tallying Centre at the Bomas of Kenya.

Hassan also said polling stations that return votes exceeding the registered number of voters would have their results cancelled and action taken against Presiding and Returning Officers.

“If any polling station reports results that is more than the number of registered voters, then that’s an automatic cancellation and the officers who signed the results would answer for this,” Hassan warned.

He further said the commission had received allegations of election irregularities in some areas and promised to probe the claims after the results are filed by Returning Officers.

The Constitution states that the winner of a presidential election must garner at least 50 per cent plus one of the total cast votes.  Article 138(4)(a) of the supreme law on procedure at presidential elections states among others that “a candidate shall be declared elected as president if the candidate receives more than half of the votes cast in the election.”

In the North Rift, affected voters failed to clearly distinguish the colours of the ballot boxes leading them to erroneously place ballot papers in the wrong boxes, thus spoiling votes. The high number of ballot papers was also cited as a contributor to the rejected votes as voters confused candidates.

A member of CORD who spoke to The Standard said they were now considering the spoilt votes as the ‘third candidate’ since they were more that what United Democratic Front’s Musalia Mudavadi was projected to have received.

Hotly contested

Former Commissioner of the defunct Interim Independent Electoral Commission (IIEC) Ken Nyaundi said the national electoral agency should have done adequate civic education to reduce the number of spoilt votes. 

“In a hotly contested election more civic education would have helped reduce chances of recording a high number of spoilt votes,” explained Nyaundi. Albert Koech, a voter in Uasin Gishu, told The Standard that the seats contested in the ballot papers were not clearly visible.

“Because of the huge lines, you wanted to get done with the voting as soon as you could. But it was difficult distinguishing the ballot papers. As for me I made a mistake in one paper and I ended up crossing and ticking the right candidate. I guess that was spoilt,” he said.

Higher Education Minister Margaret Kamar was among those whose votes were spoilt after she mistakenly placed a senator’s ballot paper in the governor ballot box.