On 17 September 2026, the High Court directed IEBC to give accredited political parties and election observers interim access to specified records within the continuous voter-registration system. The order covered access to source code and audit logs while the court considers the remaining constitutional questions raised in a petition filed by advocate Gilbert Njoroge.
The petition was opposed by both IEBC and the United Democratic Alliance (UDA). That alignment deserves public attention because one party is the constitutional referee while the other is the governing party preparing to defend the presidency in 2027. They may have entered court for different legal reasons, but Kenyans were left with the same troubling picture: IEBC and UDA stood on one side while a petitioner asked for greater independent scrutiny of election records.
Former National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi, whose Democratic Party is associated with the petition, welcomed the ruling as an advance for electoral transparency, accountability and verifiability. His political interest in the matter is obvious and should not be disguised. Muturi is part of the opposition, while UDA has an interest in defending favorable arrangements established under a government it leads. IEBC, however, cannot behave like another interested political combatant because its authority depends upon remaining visibly separate from every candidate and party.
What the court did not decide
The court did not find that IEBC’s voter-registration system had been compromised. It did not declare the commission’s election technology unsuitable, and it did not order every part of the system opened to the public. Some claims were struck out because they had already been decided or because the petitioners had not first used the specialized procedures created for procurement and data-protection disputes. The judge also declined to stop the use of the technology while the case proceeds.
Those limits matter because the ruling should not be converted into a claim that the court discovered a plan to manipulate the 2027 election. It found no such thing. What the court recognized, on an interim basis, was that accredited political parties and observers have a legitimate interest in examining specified technical records while the unresolved questions receive a full hearing.
Why IEBC’s resistance still matters
That narrower finding still leaves IEBC with an uncomfortable question. Why did an institution constitutionally required to conduct transparent and verifiable elections resist supervised access by accredited actors whose role includes checking its work?
There may be serious answers. Source code may contain security-sensitive information, licensed intellectual property or details that would expose the system to attack. Audit logs may contain personal data or reveal administrative accounts that should not be released without controls. Continuous access could interfere with live registration work, while an unclear court order could allow interested parties to demand information far beyond what they need for verification. IEBC was entitled to place those risks before the court.
It was not entitled to leave the public guessing.
The commission should have explained precisely what information it was protecting, from whom, under which law and through what safer alternative. It could have proposed controlled inspection by accredited technical experts, confidentiality agreements, read-only access, supervised testing or independent examination by specialists reporting to all parties. Opposition to unrestricted access can be responsible. Opposition without a credible route to independent verification looks like secrecy.
UDA’s interest is political. IEBC’s cannot be.
The presence of UDA on the same side made that distinction even more important. A governing party may calculate that opening technical records will help its opponents challenge the system or construct allegations before the election. That is a political calculation, however understandable it may appear to party lawyers. IEBC must operate from a different calculation: what level of controlled disclosure will allow the public to verify the electoral system without exposing it to genuine security risks?
When those positions become indistinguishable in court, the commission damages itself even if its lawyers can defend every paragraph of their submissions.
Institutional independence is not measured only by appointment procedures or proof of direct political instructions. It is also communicated through conduct. Citizens watch which information IEBC volunteers, which questions it answers, whose arguments it adopts and which parties benefit from its resistance. An electoral commission may be legally independent while repeatedly behaving in ways that make its neutrality difficult to see.
This problem is especially serious because UDA is not an ordinary litigant. President William Ruto is expected to seek re-election as the party’s candidate. The party therefore has a direct interest in the administrative and technological system through which that contest will be conducted. IEBC’s responsibility is to ensure that UDA, the Democratic Party and every other participant receive equal access under rules announced before political advantage can determine their application.
The commission should have welcomed the opportunity to define those rules. Instead, it opposed the petition alongside the party with the greatest present interest in defending the electoral arrangements. Nothing in that fact proves coordination or improper influence. However, public confidence does not collapse only after proof of collusion. It also declines when an institution repeatedly fails to recognize how its choices appear to reasonable citizens.
Paper ballots can be watched. Software cannot.
Kenya has encountered this problem before. Election technology is often introduced as a cure for human interference, only to become less open to inspection than the paper procedure it was meant to strengthen. A voter can watch ballots being counted at a polling station. Agents can sign Form 34A, receive copies and record objections. Once the same voter is asked to trust software, servers, administrator accounts and digital logs, the evidence moves into systems that only specialists can examine.
That shift creates an obligation for greater explanation, not greater secrecy. Technology cannot become trusted merely because IEBC purchased it, a vendor certified it or officials announced that it had been tested. The relevant question is whether authorized outsiders can test the commission’s claims without depending entirely upon the commission’s own account.
Source code and audit logs serve different purposes in that inquiry. Source code contains the instructions that tell software how to operate, but inspecting it does not, by itself, prove that the same version ran during an election. Audit logs record activities within a system, including entries, changes, access attempts and administrative actions, depending upon how the system was designed. Logs can therefore help investigators reconstruct events, but only when they are complete, protected from alteration and linked to named accounts and reliable timestamps.
Opening source code without controlling versions may create an impressive technical ceremony that proves very little. Producing logs after a dispute without showing how they were preserved may also fail to establish what happened. Meaningful scrutiny requires IEBC to disclose the architecture of proof: which software version was tested, where it was deployed, who could change it, what actions were logged, how those logs were secured and who may examine them.
Do not wait until the presidential petition window
The High Court case should force that conversation before August 2027. The worst time to negotiate access is during the seven days allowed for filing a presidential petition. By then, parties are looking for evidence under enormous pressure, IEBC is defending a declared result, and every request is interpreted as an attempt either to expose fraud or to overturn the winner. Procedures agreed during that period will inevitably appear designed to assist one side.
IEBC should now publish an electoral-technology access protocol covering political parties, observers, courts and independent experts. The protocol should identify which records exist, who may request them, what security conditions apply and how quickly IEBC must respond. It should distinguish records that may be published openly from those requiring supervised inspection. Where access is refused, the commission should give written reasons to allow interrogation and challenge before polling begins.
The protocol must also prevent the governing party from enjoying information unavailable to its competitors. Any briefing, demonstration, testing session or technical record supplied to one party should be offered to all qualifying parties under identical conditions. Vendors should not decide whose experts may inspect systems that perform public constitutional functions. Their intellectual-property rights can be protected without turning election administration into private property.
What UDA, Muturi and IEBC should do next?
UDA should also reconsider what it gains by opposing this kind of scrutiny. If the party believes IEBC’s systems are sound, controlled independent inspection should help establish that fact. By resisting access, it risks strengthening the very suspicion it may wish to defeat. A party expecting to win credibly should want the evidence of that victory distributed widely enough to survive the commission’s mistakes and the opposition’s accusations.
Muturi and the Democratic Party also carry responsibilities. They should not describe an interim access order as final proof that the system is defective. Their technical experts must use any access to answer specific questions rather than hunt for fragments that can be detached from context and circulated as evidence of a predetermined conspiracy. Transparency becomes politically useless when those demanding it refuse to accept what the disclosed records show.
The court will eventually determine the remaining legal issues. IEBC does not need to wait for that judgment before correcting the institutional signal created by this case. It can publish its reasons for opposing the petition, identify the security concerns it raised and explain how accredited parties and observers will now receive access under the interim order.
An electoral commission should never appear more frightened of inspection than of malfunction. When IEBC and the governing party, UDA, stand together against access to election records, citizens are entitled to ask whose confidence is being protected and whose scrutiny is being resisted. The answer cannot be another assurance that the commission is independent. IEBC must show that independence by opening every record that can safely be examined, protecting only what genuinely requires protection and applying the same rules to the party in State House as it applies to every party trying to remove it.
This article was written by George Nyongesa, a lecturer in philosophy and logic at the University of Nairobi and Chuka University.
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