Everything the IEBC Is Responsible For, in One List

The IEBC is the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission. It runs Kenyan elections. That sentence is true and almost useless, because it hides about ten separate jobs that happen in different years, in different offices, and with very different consequences for you.

Here is the whole of it in one place.

Where the commission gets its powers

Three statutes do most of the work. The Constitution of Kenya 2010 creates the commission and lists its functions. The IEBC Act 2011 governs how the commission is constituted and how it operates. The Elections Act 2011 governs the conduct of an election itself, from registration through to the declaration of a result.

Two more sit beside them. The Political Parties Act 2011 governs the parties whose names appear on the ballot. The Election Offences Act 2016 makes certain conduct at an election a crime, including conduct by election officials.

The commission is chaired by Erastus Ethekon.

The full list of what the IEBC is responsible for

Continuous registration of voters, and maintenance of the register. The register is not built once every five years. It is a standing document that is added to, cleaned, verified and published.

Delimitation of boundaries. Counties, constituencies and wards. Kenya has 47 counties, 290 constituencies and 1,450 wards, and reviewing where those lines run is the commission's job rather than Parliament's. Related: why the lines have not moved.

Conduct and supervision of elections and referenda for every elective body and office established by the Constitution.

Registration of candidates. The papers that put your name on a ballot are filed with the commission, through its field officers.

Regulation of the process by which parties nominate candidates. The primary belongs to the party. The rules the primary has to satisfy do not.

Settlement of electoral disputes, including disputes arising from nominations, but not election petitions. Once a result is declared, the dispute belongs to a court.

Voter education, and promotion of voter education across the country.

Facilitation of the observation, monitoring and evaluation of elections, which is the legal basis on which observers get accredited.

Regulation of campaign spending. The commission sets the limits and the reporting obligations that come with them.

Development of a code of conduct for candidates and parties, and enforcement of it once the election period opens.

Ten jobs. Only one of them happens on polling day.

Who inside the commission actually touches your seat

Not the commissioners. The commission is a small body of appointed members with a secretariat behind it, and almost nothing you experience as a voter or a candidate is done by any of them personally.

The people who decide things in your area are field officers. A returning officer runs the election in a constituency or a county. Deputy returning officers assist. A presiding officer runs a single polling station and is in charge of everything inside it on the day. Clerks handle the queue, the register and the ballot papers.

That structure is where a result is actually produced, which is why the roles are worth knowing by name rather than by rumour. Related: what the returning officer does.

What the IEBC does not do

It does not register political parties. That is the Registrar of Political Parties. A party dispute goes to the Political Parties Disputes Tribunal, not to the commission.

It does not decide an election petition. A presidential petition goes to the Supreme Court within 7 days of declaration and is determined within 14 days. Every other petition is filed within 28 days of declaration.

It does not prosecute. Election offences are investigated and prosecuted through the criminal justice system like any other crime.

It does not set the election date. The general election is held on the second Tuesday of August every fifth year. The next one is 10 August 2027, and nobody at the commission can move it.

And it does not deliver voter education to everybody, which is a point worth sitting with. Related: why that gap is now a campaign job.

What to do with this in 2026

Three things, none of which take a day.

Find out where your constituency returning officer's office is, and what its published contact details are. That office is the single most useful address in your electoral life, and most people never learn it until the week they need it.

Confirm your own registration details and the polling station you are assigned to. Registration is continuous, which means the register changes, which means the answer you had at the last general election is not automatically the answer now.

And read the gazette notices when they come. Almost every number that matters in a Kenyan election, from the spending cap for your seat to the location of a polling station, is fixed by a notice rather than by a statute. The statute tells you the rule exists. The notice tells you what it says this time.