An Election Has Been Nullified. What Happens in the Next 90 Days.

Updated 2 October 2026.

A nullified election does not hand the seat to the person who came second. That is the first thing to understand about it, and it is the thing most often assumed the other way round.

Nullification empties the seat. What fills it is another election.

The two different outcomes people confuse

A court that upholds a petition can do one of two quite different things.

It can declare the election void, which makes the seat vacant and requires a fresh election.

Or, where the evidence establishes the correct figures rather than merely casting doubt on the declared ones, it can determine that a different candidate was validly elected. That is a much higher evidentiary bar, because the court is not saying the count is unreliable, it is saying it knows what the count should have been.

Doubt gets you a fresh election. Proof of the true figures gets you the seat. Most successful petitions produce the first.

The 90-day clock, and who may stand in the fresh election

A by-election is held within 90 days of a seat falling vacant. A governor's seat runs shorter. Section 86 of the Elections Act sends a nullified governor's election to Article 182(5) of the Constitution, and the fresh election is held within 60 days after the county assembly speaker takes over as acting governor.

That is the timetable the IEBC works to, and it governs everything that follows: gazettement, the nomination window, the campaign period, the printing of ballot papers and the recruitment of officials for the affected stations.

The presidency runs on its own constitutional timetable, and it is shorter than 90 days. If that is the situation you are reading about, read the current constitutional provision rather than relying on the by-election rule.

The field is ordinarily the same one, including the candidate whose election was voided. Nullification is a finding about an election, not usually a finding about a person.

That changes where the judgment makes findings about the conduct of a specific individual. A court can refer a matter to the prosecuting authority where an election offence appears to have been committed, and the Election Offences Act carries consequences that can reach a person's eligibility. Those are separate proceedings with their own standards, and they do not resolve inside 90 days.

What the fresh election is actually like

Not a rerun of the same contest. Four things change, and every one of them matters more than the legal argument that produced it.

Turnout falls, usually sharply. A single-seat election held outside a general election has none of the pull of a six-ballot polling day.

The register is essentially fixed. Continuous registration and its cutoffs govern who may vote, so the pool is close to the one that already voted. Persuasion and turnout are the levers. Registration is not.

The campaign is condensed and expensive. Everything is bought at once, in a short window, with national attention on a single ward or constituency.

The public pays for it. A fresh election is funded from public money, which is why the cost of nullification is an argument in itself. Related: what a by-election costs.

The part campaigns underestimate

The agent network has to be rebuilt from nothing, in weeks.

The people who worked the voided election have moved on, taken other work, or concluded that the exercise was pointless. A campaign that had names, wards and tasks recorded can call them back in a day. A campaign that had a crowd cannot call anybody, because it never knew who they were.

Related: keeping agents safe and organised.

And it can happen again

A fresh election is an election. It is declared, and it can be petitioned on the same terms as the one before it, inside the same deadlines.

Related: the presidential clock.

What to do with this in 2026

Two things, and neither of them is legal work.

Keep a permanent record of who worked for you. Names, wards, streams, tasks, dates, phone numbers. Not because you expect a nullification, but because every fast-turnaround election in Kenya is won by whoever can reassemble an organisation quickest, and 90 days is a fast turnaround.

Assume the seat you contest on 10 August 2027 may be contested again within the year. Budget, staffing and supplier relationships all look different if you plan for one election and different again if you plan for the possibility of two. Planning for two costs almost nothing while it remains hypothetical.