For years, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) has faced questions about the processes for clearing, disqualifying, or reinstating candidates in the weeks leading up to a general election.
The Commission has responded to these queries with the launch of the Pre-Election Dispute Resolution (Pre-EDR) Report for the 2022 General Election alongside a companion Case Digest, under the theme “Path to the Polls.”
The report offers the most detailed account IEBC has published of how its Dispute Resolution Committee (DRC) handled the nomination disputes ahead of the August 2022 polls, including the ones that made headlines, such as Mike Sonko’s Mombasa governor bid, Sakaja Johnson’s degree controversy, and Jimi Wanjigi’s presidential run.
Commission Chairperson Erastus Ethekon put the report’s purpose plainly at the launch:
“The Pre-Election Dispute Resolution Report reflects candidly on the Commission’s experiences during the 2022 General Election, documenting the challenges encountered, the lessons learned, and the reforms necessary to strengthen future electoral processes.”
The 2022 Elections put in numbers:
| Metric | Figure |
| Complaints heard and determined | 323 |
| Statutory deadline to decide | 10 days |
| DRC panels constituted | 3 |
| Rise in independent candidates since 2017 | ~64% |
| Predicted risk of election violence in 2027 | 84.1% |
What Worked
Much of the DRC’s credibility in 2022 came down to one simple decision where IEBC brought in outside lawyers to chair all three panels instead of having its own commissioners run the show. Even the IEBC Chairperson stayed off every panel, which was new.
In 2013 and 2017, he used to sit on the panel himself as its only lawyer. This time he stepped back because he was also the official named in several complaints tied to the presidential race, so having the Chairperson judge those cases too would have looked like marking his own homework.
The Committee also chose to fix problems instead of punishing them. If a candidate made a paperwork mistake, they were usually given 48 hours to correct it rather than getting kicked out of the race over a technicality.
Everything the Committee decided in 2022 has now been pulled together into one reference document, called the Case Digest. Previously, there was no single place where past rulings were recorded, so every new panel was starting from scratch. Future panels now have real past decisions to guide them instead of figuring it out fresh each election.
Where It Broke Down
Ten days to resolve 323 complaints was a brutal timeline. Panel members were working nights and weekends just to hit the legal deadline, what the report itself calls “extreme pressure.”
Verification was often just trust. If a candidate said they’d resigned from public service, their resignation letter was accepted with no real way to check whether it was genuine.
The panels also disagreed with each other on basic questions. There’s a separate body called the Political Parties Disputes Tribunal (PPDT) that handles disputes within political parties. In one case, a DRC panel said it had no power to enforce a PPDT ruling. In a nearly identical case decided the same day, a different panel ruled the opposite way.
On top of all that, people filing complaints didn’t know which body they were even supposed to go to, the DRC, the PPDT, or their party’s internal process. That confusion hit independent candidates hardest, and their numbers were already rising fast.
Proposed list of reforms that can be implemented from a legislative mandate or within the Commission itself:
| Legal reforms (need Parliament) | Administrative fixes (IEBC can act alone) |
| Extend DRC decision window from 10 to 14 working days | Deploy a legal case management system with virtual hearings |
| Extend complaint filing window from 24 to 48 hours | Standardize citation format across all DRC decisions |
| Require a certificate of service alongside resignation letters | Add Paybill as a nomination fee payment option |
| Clarify the legal definition of “nomination” | Build a public awareness campaign on DRC jurisdiction |
Why the Stakes Are Higher This Time
The report isn’t landing in a calm environment. A June 2026 Kenya country analysis by the Kofi Annan Foundation, part of its Electoral Vulnerability Index for 2026-2027, puts Kenya’s predicted probability of election-related violence in 2027 at 84.1%, against a Sub-Saharan African baseline of 51.1%.
Kenya’s underlying risk score of 45.4 actually sits below that regional baseline, and the analysis credits the relatively contained 2022 election and the Supreme Court’s handling of the presidential petition as evidence institutions can hold.
However, it also notes Kenya has never had two consecutive peaceful election cycles and flags fresh volatility from Raila Odinga’s death in October 2025 and youth-led protest movements that don’t map onto the old party structures.
Two of the Foundation’s named risk drivers, trust in IEBC and its technology and the credibility of dispute resolution, sit squarely inside what this report is trying to fix. A pre-election process seen as rushed or inconsistent doesn’t just produce shaky jurisprudence. It feeds the sense that an election was decided before anyone voted.
What to Expect Before 2027
These findings are already folding into IEBC’s Strategic Plan 2024-2029 and Election Operations Plan 2025-2027, arriving the same week the Commission paused its online voter verification portal for a system upgrade and ahead of by-elections on July 16, a smaller test run of everything this report recommends.
If Parliament acts on the legal reforms, nomination disputes in 2027 get more time to file, more time to decide, and a paper trail that makes fake resignations harder to slip through. If the digital case management system and virtual hearing materialize, it would be the first real break from the Milimani-centered model that has defined DRC hearings since the committee’s creation.
Whether any of it lands depends on how fast the National Assembly moves and how seriously IEBC follows its own administrative promises. Against an 84.1% violence risk, the DRC’s competence stopped being just a technical question about candidate paperwork.
