Inside One Polling Station: What the Presiding Officer Is Responsible For

A Kenyan polling station has one person in charge of it. For that day, inside that room, their authority is close to absolute.

That person is the presiding officer, appointed by the commission for a single station or a single stream within a station. Everything that goes right or wrong in that room is theirs.

What happens before the doors open

The presiding officer arrives before voting starts, with the ballot boxes, the ballot papers, the register, the seals and the forms.

The first act of the day is a public one. The ballot boxes are shown to be empty, in front of whichever candidate and party agents are present, and then sealed. The serial numbers of the seals are recorded. Agents present are entitled to witness this and to note the numbers themselves.

An agent who arrives after that has missed the only chance to see an empty box. Related: the shape of the whole day.

What the presiding officer controls during voting

Admission to the station, and the order of the queue. Priority access for elderly voters, pregnant women and persons with disability is a decision made at this level.

Identification. The clerk operates the kit, but the presiding officer decides what happens when identification does not work. Related: what the law requires then.

Assisted voting. A voter who cannot read the ballot or mark it may be assisted, and the presiding officer records who assisted, and how.

Spoilt ballots. A voter who spoils a paper before casting it can be issued another, and the spoilt one is marked, retained and accounted for.

Order. The presiding officer can require a person who is disrupting the station to leave, including an agent.

Closing. The station closes at the time fixed for it, and every voter already in the queue at that moment is entitled to vote.

The count is the real job

Votes in Kenya are counted at the polling station, by hand, in public, in front of the agents. They are not counted at the constituency and they are not counted by a machine.

The presiding officer runs that count. Ballots are sorted, disputed ballots are ruled on one by one, and rejected ballots are recorded as rejected with the reason. That number is a real number with real consequences, and it is the one most people never look at. Related: why the rejected column matters.

Then the forms. The A form in each series is filled at the polling station: 34A for President, 35A for MP, 36A for MCA, 37A for Governor, 38A for Senator, 39A for Woman Representative. Six offices, six forms, one stream.

What the presiding officer must give your agent

The results are announced at the station.

The agents present are asked to sign each form. An agent may decline to sign, and the presiding officer records the refusal and the reason given. Declining to sign does not invalidate anything, and it is not a veto.

Each agent who was present is entitled to a copy of the form. That copy is the single most valuable piece of paper a campaign can hold, because it is the primary record of the result at that stream, signed by the officer who produced it.

The presiding officer then transmits the result and delivers the physical forms, the sealed boxes and the materials to the constituency tallying centre. Related: what happens when they arrive.

What to brief your agents on before 2027

Four things, and they fit on one page.

Be inside the station before it opens, and write down the seal numbers. Stay for the whole day, because a station you leave is a station you cannot speak about afterwards.

Never argue about a ballot. Ask for the ruling to be recorded, and note the time. The polling station diary is a document, and what is written in it can be read later.

Sign the form if it reflects what you watched, and say plainly why if it does not. Then take your copy before you leave the room, photograph it, and send the photograph somewhere it cannot be lost.

Everything else your campaign does on 10 August 2027 depends on somebody doing those four things in every stream.