Election 2017: Concern over high number of spoilt votes

The number of spoilt and disputed votes in this year's polls could be highest ever in Kenya's election history.

In fact, if  'Rejected Ballot' had been a candidate, s/he would have come third based on the provisional results that put President Uhuru Kenyatta ahead of NASA's Raila Odinga.

By the time of going to press yesterday, a record 393,865 votes were listed by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) as rejected votes. There were 108,975 spoilt votes in the 2013 elections.

Many rejected Votes

The number of rejected votes so far is higher than what the rest of six presidential candidates have collected.

By Wednesday, with 85 per cent of polling stations submitting their results, President Kenyatta had 8,000,436 while Raila had 6,604,273 votes.

Even though on Tuesday, IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati validated ballot papers stamped "REJECTED" at the back, saying rejected ballot papers can only be labelled as such when stamped on the top page, the high number of spoilt votes marked as rejected has hit an all time high.