Kenyan MPs pass election bill, keep IEBC's duty to livestream polling-station results

Kenya's National Assembly passed the Elections (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill, 2024 on 22 October 2026 after deleting Clause 22, which would have removed the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission's (IEBC) legal duty to livestream results announced at polling stations. Section 39 of the Elections Act, which requires the commission to set up a livestreaming mechanism, stays as it is, Dr Aurelia Rono, Principal Secretary in the State Department for Parliamentary Affairs, said in a press statement reported by the Kenyan news site Citizen Digital on 24 October.

Several Kenyan media outlets reported on 23 October that MPs had scrapped the duty. The National Assembly said in an explainer that "the amendment passed by the National Assembly retains the requirement on the IEBC to establish a mechanism for the livestreaming of election results", the Kenyan news site The Kenya Times reported. Majority Leader Kimani Ichung'wah said in a statement quoted by the site: "The Elections Act provisions on live streaming remain as they are under section 39 1G. Nothing has changed."

Section 39(1G) provides that "the Commission shall, to facilitate public information, establish a mechanism for the live streaming of results" announced at polling stations, and that the results so streamed "shall be for purposes of public information only" and "shall not be the basis for a declaration by the Commission", the Daily Nation reported on 24 October. As received from the Senate, Clause 22 would have deleted Section 39 and put in its place a new section that kept the electronic transmission of results from polling stations to tallying centres but contained no livestreaming duty.

The National Assembly said it removed the clause following a High Court judgment delivered in Nairobi on 22 September 2026, which upheld Section 39 and Regulation 83(2) of the Elections (General) Regulations and cautioned Parliament to consider the court's interpretation of Section 39 when finalising election legislation before the 2027 General Election.

The bill started in the Senate as Senate Bill No. 29 of 2024, was published in the Kenya Gazette on 7 May 2024 and amends the Elections Act, 2011. It came out of the National Dialogue Committee (NADCO) process, and the Senate passed it in December 2024, the Kenyan tech site Techweez reported on 21 October.

The bill passed by MPs also makes the voters' register available for inspection except during designated periods, removes the IEBC's involvement in political party primaries, revises the procedure for recalling MPs to align it with the Constitution and gives political parties more flexibility in nominating candidates, Rono said. Voter registration may be suspended during a by-election only within the affected electoral area. The bill now returns to the Senate under Article 110(4) of the Constitution.

The livestream rule has been to court before. A 2017 amendment to the Elections Act said livestreamed results were for public information only, and the High Court struck that restriction down in April 2018 after a petition by Katiba Institute and others, holding that it was contrary to the constitutional principles of transparency and accountability. The Daily Nation reported that the livestreaming clause MPs kept is the one the High Court declared unconstitutional; the National Assembly said Section 39(1G) had not changed and had never been declared unconstitutional. Before the vote, the IEBC backed removing the duty: it argued that livestreaming is not what makes election results official, and raised concerns that viewers could mistake figures shown during a live broadcast for final results.

The official record of the presidential vote is Form 34A, the signed results form completed at each polling station, following the Supreme Court's 2017 ruling. In 2022, the National Assembly's justice committee rejected an IEBC proposal to stop livestreaming presidential results.