The Electoral Code of Conduct Is Enforceable, and Most Candidates Have Not Read It

Updated 2 October 2026.

You subscribe to the Electoral Code of Conduct as a condition of being a candidate in Kenya. It is not a pledge, it is not a ceremony, and it is not optional.

Almost nobody reads it.

The Code sits in the Elections Act 2011 and binds every political party, every candidate, and the officials and supporters acting for them. The IEBC enforces it. Its consequences are separate from the criminal law and, for a working campaign, usually more immediate.

What subscribing actually does

It creates obligations that can be enforced against you by a body that also controls your place on the ballot. That combination is what gives the Code its force.

The obligations themselves are not exotic. Campaign peacefully. Do not use language that incites violence or that discriminates on grounds including ethnicity, gender, disability or religion. Do not use or threaten force. Do not bribe. Do not damage other campaigns' materials or disrupt their meetings. Do not misuse public resources. Do not carry weapons to political events. Respect the rights of women, of persons with disabilities and of minority communities to participate. Cooperate with the Commission and its officers.

Read as a list, none of it is surprising. Read as a set of duties you are personally answerable for, it changes what you have to manage.

Related: what the Code binds you to once the election period opens.

You are answerable for people you did not hire

This is the provision candidates are genuinely caught by.

The Code reaches the conduct of your party officials, your agents and your supporters acting in connection with your campaign. A complaint does not fail because you were not present, did not know, and would not have approved.

That is not unfair, and it is not unusual in regulation of this kind. It is a design choice with an obvious purpose: without it, every campaign would outsource its worst behaviour to people whose names are not on the ballot, which is precisely what happens where such provisions are absent.

Practically, it means a candidate has to be able to say who speaks for the campaign, who organises for it, and who is paid by it, and to be able to show that the instruction to behave was given rather than assumed.

The sanctions are not criminal, which is the point

The Commission does not need a conviction to act. It runs an enforcement process of its own, and the sanctions available to it escalate.

A formal warning. A financial penalty. A prohibition on campaigning or on particular campaign activity. An application to the High Court for orders, which can reach the cancellation of a nomination.

The Code sets out the procedure, but it does not fix the size of a fine. Paragraph 7 of the Second Schedule to the Elections Act leaves the amount to the Commission, so anybody quoting you a figure from memory is guessing.

What matters strategically is the timing. A criminal prosecution for an election offence takes as long as a criminal prosecution takes. A Code process can produce a consequence during the campaign, which is when a consequence actually costs you something.

Where the Code and the criminal law diverge

Same conduct, two tracks, different standards.

Bribery is an offence under the Election Offences Act 2016 and a breach of the Code. Violence is both. Hate speech is both, plus a third route through the hate speech statute. Tearing down posters is a Code breach that may or may not reach the criminal threshold: where a poster can and cannot go.

The tracks do not wait for each other. An acquittal in a criminal court does not undo a Code sanction, and a Code sanction does not settle a criminal file.

The one meeting that makes this manageable

Hold it before your first rally, with everyone who acts in your name in the room, and cover four things.

Read the Code aloud. It is short, and hearing it is different from being told about it. Name the people authorised to speak for the campaign, and say plainly that nobody else does. Say what happens internally when somebody breaches it, and mean it, because a rule with no consequence is a preference. And record that the meeting happened, with the attendance list.

That record is worth having. When a complaint arrives about something a supporter did in your name, the difference between a campaign that briefed its people and one that did not is a real difference, and it is the only part of your answer you can build in advance. Between now and 10 August 2027 you will hold that meeting once or explain its absence repeatedly.