The IEBC is plotting a major overhaul of how Kenyans will follow the 2027 General Election, with a new Bill seeking to scrap the requirement for real-time livestreaming of results from polling stations.
Details of the proposed Elections (Amendment) Bill reveal a huge change in how the 2027 presidential results will be tallied and announced.
Under the proposed amendments, Section 39 of the Elections Act, which currently forces the IEBC to livestream results directly from polling stations, will be deleted entirely.
Instead, the commission will upload scanned copies of physical Form 34As onto online portals and deliver hard copies for public verification. There will be no more live feeds and no more watching results trickle in real-time as Kenyans did in 2022.
The Bill also introduces a new rule that presidential results must be fully tallied, verified, declared, and electronically transmitted before any other elective positions, governors, senators, MPs, MCAs, are processed.
Proponents of the change, led by Senate Majority Leader Aaron Cheruiyot, argue that ditching live streaming will give the IEBC time to verify that the numbers being transmitted match what’s on the physical forms before releasing them to the public.
“This ensures accuracy and prevents premature declarations based on incomplete data,” a source familiar with the Bill told this writer.
The proposal draws from recommendations made by the National Dialogue Committee (NADCO), the bipartisan team set up by President William Ruto and Raila Odinga after the 2023 anti-government protests.
Even the Elections Observation Group (Elog), a respected election monitoring outfit, has weighed in, saying that as long as polling station forms remain the primary record, live streaming is “not strictly necessary.”
