No One Attained 50+1%; Busia County Senator Okiya Omutata Files A Petition Challenging Presidential Elections

Okiya Omtatah, a senator from Busia, has filed a suit contesting the legitimacy of the presidential results of the general election on August 9.

Omtatah claims that none of the candidates who ran for the presidency met the constitutional requirement of 50 percent plus one, and he asks the Supreme Court to annul the presidential elections as well as the proclamation of the president-elect and vice president-elect.

The petitioner further claims that the IEBC’s calculation of the presidential results was mathematically flawed and that at least 140,028 votes were left out.

“We seek for an order quashing the results of the presidential elections announced by the Chairman vide Form 34C dated 15th August, 2022, quashing Form 34D (the election Certificate) issued to the purported President elect on 15th August, 2022 and quashing the declaration of persons elected as president-elect and deputy president-elect announced by the Chairman,” reads part of the petition.

“A declaration that at least 140,028 number of untallied votes substantially affects the final results to the extent that none of the four candidates meets the 50% + 1 constitutional threshold.”
Omtatah provided a thorough justification for his claim, pointing out that there were 22,120,458 total registered voters in Kenya’s National Voters Register, which was used for the presidential election.

Then he added that on August 15, 2022, IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati declared the results, with William Ruto winning with 7,176,141 (50.49 percent), Raila Odinga coming in second with 6,942,930 (48.85 percent), George Wajackoyah coming in last with 61,969 (0.44 percent), and David Waihiga coming in third with 31,987. (0.23 percent ). 14,213,027 of these votes were deemed to be legitimate.

14,326,641 votes were cast overall, and 113,614 of those votes were invalid or rejected, making a total of 14,326,641.

According to Chebukati, this figure, when compared to the 22,120,458 total number of registered voters, resulted in a 64.77 percent voter turnout rate.

However, Omtatah pointed out that a different figure was given from the commission on August 9 after the official closure of the polls claiming that Chebukati said the voter turnout stood at 65.4%, “based on the verification of the KIEMS kits which were functional during the process of voting.”

“The Chairperson further noted that the 65.4% voter turnout was minus the voter turnout from polling stations where KIEMS kits had malfunctioned and the Commission had authorized the use of the manual register for voting.”

Based on the aforementioned claim, Omtatah contends that 14,466,779 votes were cast in total, which means that 140,138 votes were left out of the final tally.

The petitioner also made another claim, arguing that in order to determine the precise number of votes that have been counted, the uncounted votes (140,138) should be added to the initial figure of votes included in Chebukati’s form (14,213,027). There are 14,353,165 valid votes in total.

Omtatah highlighted that none of the candidates reach the 50 plus 1 percent criterion when the new number of votes is compared to the votes that each candidate received to determine their percentage. He predicts that Ruto will have 49.99% of the vote, Raila 48.37%, Waihiga 0.22 and Wajackoyah 0.43.