Electoral Reforms
Electoral Laws and Bills
The rules in force. The changes before Parliament.
Current law
When the rulebook was written
- 2011 3 Acts, 0 notices
- 2012 1 Act, 5 notices
- 2013 1 Act, 0 notices
- 2016 1 Act, 0 notices
- 2017 0 Acts, 7 notices
- 2019 0 Acts, 2 notices
- 2021 0 Acts, 1 notice
Understand the rulebook
The legal foundation
The rulebook in six civic questions
Start with what you need to understand. Each answer points to the exact principal Act on Kenya Law; the regulations, rules and orders sit in the complete record below.
- 01 Who runs elections, and under what safeguards? How the electoral commission is constituted, governed and held to standards of independence, transparency and accountability. Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission Act · Cap. 7C
- 02 How are political parties formed and governed? Registration, membership, coalitions, party funding, internal governance and the Political Parties Disputes Tribunal. Political Parties Act · Cap. 7D
- 03 Who may fund a campaign, and how is spending controlled? Candidate, party and referendum campaign money: contributions, spending limits, records, reporting and enforcement. Election Campaign Financing Act · Cap. 7A
- 04 How is a vote run and challenged? The main election rulebook: voter registration, nominations, polling, counting, results and election petitions. Elections Act · Cap. 7
- 05 What election conduct can lead to penalties? Bribery, intimidation, interference with election material and other conduct that the law treats as an election offence. Election Offences Act · Cap. 66
- 06 What must a published election poll disclose? Rules for publishing electoral opinion polls, including timing and information about the poll's sponsor and method. Publication of Electoral Opinion Polls Act · Cap. 7B
How this electoral-law collection is scoped
Kenya Law is the authority for enacted law, and these 21 instruments are its rows. The same scope is used for the Bills page: an instrument belongs here if it governs an election to public office in Kenya or the regulation of political parties.
Find an instrument
21 of 21 Kenya Law instruments shown, and 24 of 24 of the IEBC’s own published copies.
Download 21 instruments as CSV Exactly the rows shown above, each with the official record it came from.
Compare the official instruments 21 Kenya Law rows + 24 IEBC copies
Principal Acts
The statutes themselves, as enacted by Parliament.
| Instrument | Number | Year | Assented |
|---|---|---|---|
| Election Offences Act | Cap. 66 | 2016 | 13 Sep 2016 |
| Election Campaign Financing Act | Cap. 7A | 2013 | 24 Dec 2013 |
| Publication of Electoral Opinion Polls Act | Cap. 7B | 2012 | 15 Jun 2012 |
| Elections Act | Cap. 7 | 2011 | 27 Aug 2011 |
| Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission Act | Cap. 7C | 2011 | 5 Jul 2011 |
| Political Parties Act | Cap. 7D | 2011 | 27 Aug 2011 |
Subsidiary legislation
Regulations, rules and orders made under those Acts and gazetted as legal notices.
The IEBC’s own published copies24
Kenya Law is the authority for enacted law; the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission publishes its own copies of the instruments it administers. These are shown separately rather than merged into the tables above, because the two bodies are authoritative for different things and collapsing them would misstate which published which text. They are also not duplicates: they carry the revised editions and the live 2027 drafts — the campaign-financing spending-limit determination and the draft ECF Regulations put out for comment — that Kenya Law does not hold as such.
The IEBC also publishes rulings, notices and reports — those are not instruments, so they are listed with every other official document rather than here.
That last column is when the Commission published the file on its own website — not when the instrument was made. IEBC's listings state no instrument date at all, so we record none rather than infer one; the instrument's own year is in Kenya Law's tables above.
A legal notice is made and gazetted, not assented, so the blank in that column on the subsidiary table is correct rather than missing — 6 of the 6 principal Acts carry an assent date, and commencement is what a legal notice records. Every row links to Kenya Law's own text; where a consolidated revision exists, that is the text Kenya Law serves.