Every Kenyan Ballot Paper, and What Each One Decides

On polling day a Kenyan voter is handed six ballot papers. Most people arrive with a firm view on two or three of them.

Here is what each one actually decides, in the order a voter is likely to understand them.

Member of County Assembly — Form 36A

Your ward representative. Passes county laws on markets, licensing, waste and land use. Approves the county budget, which is where ward development allocations are fought over. Oversees the county executive through committees. Can vote to impeach the governor.

This is the person you call about drainage, and the office with the most direct power over your immediate surroundings.

Member of Parliament — Form 35A

Your constituency representative in the National Assembly. Legislates, approves the national budget and taxation, and oversees national government.

Historically also associated with constituency development spending, though the legal status of that has been contested.

Governor — Form 37A

Chief executive of the county. Responsible for health facilities, county roads, water, agriculture extension, markets and county planning. Controls a substantial budget — counties collectively received around Sh428 billion for 2026/27.

In terms of day-to-day services, the most consequential office on the paper.

Senator — Form 38A

Represents the county in the Senate, which protects the interests of counties and their governments and oversees how county money is spent.

This is one of the two papers voters understand least, and its rejected-ballot figures show it.

County Woman Representative — Form 39A

Elected county-wide to the National Assembly, and constitutionally part of Kenya's answer to the two-thirds gender requirement.

The other paper voters understand least, for the same reason: county-wide, less locally visible, less nationally covered.

President — Form 34A

Head of state and government. Requires more than half the national vote plus at least 25 per cent in more than half the 47 counties.

Why the middle two suffer

Ballot fatigue is real and measurable. Voters mark the papers they care about and lose confidence on the ones they do not, which shows up as blank or rejected ballots — and the rejected figure is printed on every result form.

A senate or woman representative campaign that does not explain what the seat does is relying on the voter already knowing, and the numbers say a proportion of them do not.

What a ticket should do about it

Treat the six as one conversation.

A canvasser at a door is there for all six candidates, not one. Ninety seconds explaining that six papers are coming and what two of them are for is the cheapest vote-protection available, and it costs a visit you were already making.

That is the whole logic of running a ticket together rather than as six unconnected campaigns — shared volunteers, shared coordinators, shared agents watching all six counts at the same stream. It is what BallotWinners is built around, and it is why a six-ballot country should not require six separate campaign operations.

Related: six ballots, one platform.

Why ballot order matters more than people think

Six papers handed over in sequence produces a predictable pattern: attention is highest on the first paper a voter cares about and declines afterwards.

That is not a theory. It is visible in the rejected-ballot figures printed on every result form, and it falls hardest on the county-wide seats voters understand least.

For a senate or county woman representative campaign, the practical consequence is that the single highest-return message is not about the candidate. It is about the paper: which one it is, what the seat does, and that it is worth marking carefully.

Ninety seconds at a door, added to a visit already being made, is the whole intervention — and in a county-wide race decided by a few thousand votes across dozens of wards, it is very likely worth more than any poster.