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Odinga & 16 others v Ruto & 10 others; Law Society of Kenya & 4 others (Amicus Curiae) (Presidential Election Petition E005, E001, E002, E003, E004, E007 & E008 of 2022 (Consolidated)) [2022] KESC 54 (KLR) (Election Petitions) (5 September 2022) (Judgment) Neutral citation: [2022] KESC 54 (KLR) REPUBLIC OF KENYA IN THE SUPREME COURT OF KENYA ELECTION PETITIONS PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION PETITION E005, E001, E002, E003, E004, E007 & E008 OF 2022 (CONSOLIDATED) MK KOOME, CJ & P, PM MWILU, DCJ & V-P, MK IBRAHIM, SC WANJALA, NS NDUNGU, I LENAOLA & W OUKO, SCJJ SEPTEMBER 5, 2022 BETWEEN RAILA ODINGA .............................................................................. 1ST PETITIONER MARTHA KARUA .......................................................................... 2ND PETITIONER JOHN NJOROGE KAMAU ............................................................ 3RD PETITIONER YOUTH ADVOCACY AFRICA ..................................................... 4TH PETITIONER PETER KIRIKA ............................................................................... 5TH PETITIONER KHELEF KHALIFA .......................................................................... 6TH PETITIONER GEORGE OSEWE ............................................................................. 7TH PETITIONER RUTH MUMBI ................................................................................. 8TH PETITIONER GRACE KAMAU .............................................................................. 9TH PETITIONER DAVID KARIUKI NGARI ............................................................ 10TH PETITIONER OKIYA OMTATAH OKOITI ........................................................ 11TH PETITIONER NYAKINA WYCLIFE GISEBE ..................................................... 12TH PETITIONER VICTOR OKUNA .......................................................................... 13TH PETITIONER JOHN MAINA ................................................................................ 14TH PETITIONER JULIAH NYOKABI CHEGE ......................................................... 15TH PETITIONER JOSEPH MUTUA NDONGA ........................................................ 16TH PETITIONER SIMON MWAURA NJENGA ....................................................... 17TH PETITIONER AND kenyalaw.org/caselaw/cases/view/240578/ 1

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Odinga, et. al v. Ruto

Judgment

Question Presented: Whether petitioners’ evidence of interference and election fraud satisfied the appropriate level of evidence as required by the Court and affected the election result, warranting the cancellation and rerun of the election?

Alleged Acts: Kenya’s former prime minister, Raila Odinga, accused President-Elect William Ruto, who beat Odinga in the country’s 2022 national election, of vote tampering, ballot stuffing, and fraudulently interfering with the election.

Procedural history: Seven days after the results of the election were announced, the petitioners filed this suit directly to the Supreme Court of Kenya, which has direct authority to hear cases concerning national electoral matters.

Summary: At the conclusion of the 2022 Kenyan national elections, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) of Kenya declared Respondent William Ruto the winner of the presidency by less than 2 percent of the total vote. However, several days after the election, petitioner Raila Odinga, the country’s former prime minister and Ruto’s opponent, sued the IEBC for being nontransparent and biased towards the respondent and alleged voter fraud and ballot stuffing by the respondent and his supporters. Based on these arguments, petitioner sought to have the election nullified. Odinga and sixteen other petitioners – all supporters of Odinga, including his running mate – challenged the results and argued that the technology used by the IEBC “fell short of the prescribed constitutional and statutory standards” of Kenya. They also alleged that certain ballot station workers intercepted, detained, or stored ballot forms to tamper with the election process. The IEBC denied the assertions but admitted there was “confusion with the printed ballot papers” and that they had discovered a “mix-up on the eve of the election[.]” Based on this, the petitioners argued that there may have been sufficient levels of vote tampering and voting irregularities to cast the election into doubt.

Conclusion: The court categorically denied every petition filed by the petitioners, holding that they did not satisfy the appropriate level of evidence for their numerous claims and that allegations of irregularity – real or otherwise – must be significant enough to have affected the final result of the election. While the Court affirmed its commitment to hearing all allegations of fraud and election malfeasance, it found no widespread evidence of interference in this case. Specifically, the Court determined that the petitioners presented no credible evidence that the IEBC or a third party fraudulently altered ballots or illegally accessed or altered electronic voting system data, writing, “[n]ot a single document had been presented by the 1st petitioner to prove systematic ballot stuffing.” The Court also held that the petitioners submitted video logs that were either from a previous election in 2017 or were “outright forgeries.” Further, the Court affirmed that even if there had been small, isolated incidents of interference, the evidence did not show that such interference altered the outcome of the election. The Court held that such issues should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, but the level of fraud present in this election did not mandate a nullification of the results.

Legal Issue(s)

Civil Procedure
Disputing Results
Electoral Administration Irregularities
Electoral Integrity
Electronic Voting
EMB Operation

Applicable Law(s): Constitution of Kenya, 2010, articles 101, 136(2)(a), 177(1) and 180(1); Elections Act, section 55B Election Offences Act, No. 37 of 2016

Region: Africa

Country: Kenya

Language of Decision

English

Court: Supreme Court

Election Type: General

Date of decision: Sep 5, 2022

Geolocation

Latitude: -1.3383790223516616

Longitude: 36.83349564671517

: Geolocation

Primary Documents

Odinga, et al. v. Ruto CASE.pdf
english
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