Form 39: How a County Elects Its Woman Representative on Paper

Updated 2 October 2026.

Of the six ballots a Kenyan voter marks, this is the one most often described incorrectly, so start with what the seat is.

Each county elects one woman representative to the National Assembly. She is elected directly, by the voters of the whole county, on a ballot paper of her own. Form 39 is the series that records it.

What Form 39A holds

The station identity at the top. The registered voters for that station and the votes cast there. Each candidate for woman representative, with the votes recorded against the name. The rejected ballots. The presiding officer's signature and date, and the agents' signature block.

It is completed in the polling station, from a count of the woman representative ballot papers, in front of whoever is in the room.

Where Form 39B is completed

At the constituency tallying centre, one for each constituency in the county.

Each Form 39B collates the station forms from one constituency. The county returning officer adds them into the figure declared on Form 39C, because the county is the electorate. Like every B form, Form 39B adds and does not count, which is what makes it checkable by anybody holding the A forms underneath it.

The confusion this seat attracts, and why it matters at the tally

Two mix-ups recur every cycle, and both cost votes.

The seat is confused with nominated seats. A woman representative is elected on a ballot. Nomination to a legislature is a different process entirely, and conflating them tells a voter their ballot is decorative when it is not.

The seat is confused with the constituency. Voters sometimes assume the woman representative is elected the way an MP is. She is not. An MP's forms stop at the constituency tally. Hers travel to the county one, which changes where a campaign has to have agents, and campaigns that plan around the wrong geography discover it on the night.

Voter education on this ballot is a campaign job as much as a commission job, and it is cheapest to do early.

The agent problem on this ballot follows from the same misunderstanding, and it is worth stating plainly. Six counts, one room, one night, and the woman representative ballot is rarely first.

A campaign for this seat cannot assume anybody else's agent will collect its form. The party agent has a party's priorities. The gubernatorial campaign has a governor's. If nobody has been told in writing to bring back Form 39A, it will not come back, and no complaint after the fact recovers a document that was never collected.

Related: the county's other late count.

Why three of the six seats share a route

Three seats are decided by the same electorate.

The governor, the senator and the woman representative are each elected by a whole county, so Form 37B, Form 38B and Form 39B are built from the same polling stations in each constituency, and the three results are declared on Form 37C, Form 38C and Form 39C at the same county tallying centre. The candidate names differ. The geography, the tally centre and the officer declaring the result do not.

That has a practical consequence campaigns rarely use. Three campaigns in the same county need agents in exactly the same rooms, and an agent already sitting there for one of them can collect all three forms if somebody has asked. Cooperation between allied county-wide campaigns is the cheapest coverage available, and it has to be agreed in advance rather than improvised on the night.

Related: how the stages work.

The form and the manner of completing it are prescribed in the Elections (General) Regulations made under the Elections Act. That is the authority.

The practical authority for an agent is narrower and more useful: the signed copy handed over in the station. Photograph it, keep the paper, and file it under the station it came from rather than in a pile.

The three numbers to compare afterwards

Once the forms are in, a county-wide campaign can do something most campaigns never do, and it takes an evening.

Its own total from the A forms. Added up station by station.

The figure on Form 39C. From the county tally.

The figure announced. Which should be the second one and occasionally is not.

If the three agree, the campaign has verified its own result and can say so with documents. If they do not, the campaign has the station forms that show where the difference entered, and a petition against a non-presidential result is filed within 28 days of the declaration. That is not a long window to start assembling evidence in.

What to do this month

Put the seat's geography in front of your team on one page: 47 counties, one woman representative each, and every station in your county feeding your total.

Then name your agents against that list rather than against the constituency you live in, and give each of them the same written instruction: collect Form 39A, check it, sign or object, and bring the copy back. Do it long before 10 August 2027, while the people you want are still available to recruit.