The Election Period Is Open. Here's What the Code of Conduct Now Binds You To.

Something changed on 20 August 2026 that almost no campaign marked.

The IEBC published a Gazette notice opening the election period for the 2027 General Election. That single notice switches on the Electoral Code of Conduct and the Election Offences Act. Until then, a lot of what happens at Kenyan political events was tacky. From that date, some of it is an offence.

What is now on the books

The Code and the Offences Act between them cover a set of behaviours that are, frankly, standard practice in Kenyan campaigns:

• Handing out money or goods to voters. Bribery is the offence people name most and prosecute least, but the exposure is real and it now runs for a full year rather than the last six weeks.
• Using hired crowds to disrupt an opponent's meeting. This is where the Code and the goon economy collide. We wrote about the economics of that in our piece on the goon rate card.
• Hate speech and ethnically framed mobilisation, including from supporters a candidate has not personally instructed.
• Using public resources for campaigning — the county vehicle, the ministry's fuel card, the office staff on a Tuesday afternoon.
• Defacing or removing an opponent's material.

The part campaigns underestimate

The Code binds a party and its candidate for the conduct of agents and supporters, not only their own. "I did not tell them to do that" has never been much of a defence and it is a worse one now that the IEBC has spent 2026 saying, repeatedly, that the November 2025 by-elections exposed gaps it intends to close.

Practically, this means a campaign needs to be able to answer a question it usually cannot: who was that, and were they with us? If your volunteer list is a WhatsApp group and a stack of sign-up sheets, you cannot answer it. If every person acting for your campaign is a named record with a ward, a coordinator and a log of what they were asked to do, you can.

That is not a compliance feature we bolted on. It is what a campaign operating system is for, and it is why BallotWinners records who was assigned what, by whom, and when — for every volunteer, agent and ward coordinator on a campaign.

What to actually do this month

1. Write down your campaign's own rules and give them to every coordinator. One page. What we do not do at rallies, what we do not pay for, who speaks to press.
2. Name one person responsible for compliance. Not the candidate. Not "the team".
3. Move all money into the dedicated campaign account the finance regulations now require. Cash that never touches the account is the evidence problem, whether or not anything improper happened.
4. Keep your supporter and volunteer records in one system, so that "was this person acting for us" has an answer with a date on it.

None of this wins votes. All of it is cheaper than a petition.

Your one-page campaign rules

Write these down, give them to every coordinator, and keep a copy with the date you issued it. It takes twenty minutes and it is the difference between a campaign that can show it set standards and one that cannot.

We do not pay voters. Not money, not goods, not "transport" that is obviously not transport.

We do not hire crowds. We do not pay anyone to attend, disrupt or block anything.

We do not use public resources. No county vehicles, no office staff on campaign work, no ministry fuel.

We do not touch an opponent's material. No removing posters, no defacing.

We do not run anonymous accounts, and nobody speaks for this campaign online without being named.

Anyone acting for us is recorded. If you are deployed, your name is on a list with the task you were given.

Why the last line is the load-bearing one

Because every other rule is unenforceable without it. A campaign that cannot say who was acting on its behalf cannot demonstrate that anybody broke a rule or that anybody did not — and under a Code that binds a party for the conduct of its agents and supporters, the absence of a record is the exposure.