The Members of Your County Assembly Nobody Voted For
Kenya has 1,450 elected MCAs, one for each ward, and about 725 nominated ones. In 2025 the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics counted 725 nominated members across the 47 county assemblies, 626 of them women and 99 men, alongside 1,447 elected members then in their seats: 2,172 MCAs in all. KNBS took the figures from the county assemblies and printed them in Table 18.10 of its Economic Survey 2026, marked provisional.
The difference is the special interest seats. Every county assembly contains members who were never on any ballot paper, placed there from party lists to make the assembly represent people the ward-by-ward result did not.
Most voters do not know they exist. Almost nobody knows who theirs are.
Two kinds of MCA in the same chamber
An elected MCA won a ward. A nominated MCA was placed on a party list, and took a seat because the party's performance in that county entitled it to one.
In the chamber they are the same. Both debate, both vote, both sit on committees, both can move a motion and both count toward the numbers that decide whether a county budget passes or a county executive survives.
Outside the chamber they are not the same at all. An elected MCA answers to a ward that can remove them. A nominated MCA answers to the party organ that placed them, and that difference explains most of what people find puzzling about how nominated members behave.
Related: what the job involves.
Where the special seats come from
The Constitution provides that a county assembly includes, alongside the ward members, members necessary to ensure that not more than two thirds of the membership is of the same gender, and members representing marginalised groups, including persons with disabilities and the youth.
Those members come from party lists submitted to the IEBC, and they are allocated in proportion to what each party won in that county. A party that took no ward in your county receives no special seats there.
Related: how a list turns into a seat.
What a nominated MCA can actually do
Everything a ward MCA can do inside the assembly, and one thing more, which is to speak for a constituency that is not geographic.
County assemblies pass county legislation, approve the county budget, oversee the county executive, and can remove members of it. Committees are where most of that work happens, and a nominated member with a committee seat is in the room where county money is argued over line by line.
What a nominated member does not have is a ward. No ward office, no ward projects, no set of villages that will judge them at a specific ballot box.
That cuts both ways. It frees a nominated member from the parochial pull that keeps ward members focused on drainage and bursaries. It also removes the pressure that makes ward members turn up.
Why the county assembly is where the gender rule bites
The two-thirds gender rule has been argued about in Parliament for years without resolution. In county assemblies it is not an argument. It operates.
The mechanism is the special seats. Members are added from party lists until the composition of the assembly complies, which means the rule is enforced by arithmetic at the point the assembly is constituted rather than by legislation nobody can pass.
That is why county assemblies look different from the National Assembly, and it is the strongest practical evidence in Kenyan politics that the rule is workable when a mechanism exists to apply it.
Related: what the rule would change nationally.
What to ask yours
Find out who the nominated members of your county assembly are. The assembly clerk's office holds the list, and so does the county assembly website in most counties.
Then ask a specific question rather than a general one. Which committee do they sit on. What did they say in the last budget debate. Which group were they nominated to represent, and when did that group last meet them.
That third question is the one that matters. A seat created to represent persons with disabilities, or youth, or women, is doing its job only if the people it was created for can reach the person holding it. Where they cannot, the seat has been filled and the function has not.
And take the same question to the party in 2026, before the next lists are drawn. The organ that compiles the list is the audience, the internal deadline comes before the IEBC one, and a group that turns up after the list is filed is negotiating over a document that is already public.
Related: who is supposed to be on those lists.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a nominated MCA in Kenya?
A member of a county assembly who reached the seat through a party list rather than by winning a ward. The Constitution provides for members added to ensure the assembly meets the two-thirds gender requirement, and for members representing marginalised groups including persons with disabilities and the youth. They are allocated in proportion to what each party won in that county.
Do nominated MCAs have the same powers as elected MCAs?
Inside the chamber, yes. They debate, vote, sit on committees and count toward the numbers that decide whether a county budget passes. What they do not have is a ward, which means no ward office, no ward projects and no set of villages that will judge them at a ballot box. That changes who they answer to, not what they can do.
Why does the two-thirds gender rule work in county assemblies?
Because a mechanism exists to apply it. Members are added from party lists until the composition of the assembly complies, so the rule is enforced by arithmetic when the assembly is constituted. Parliament has no equivalent mechanism operating in the same way, which is why the rule keeps returning there as unfinished legislation.
How many nominated MCAs are there in Kenya?
About 725. Table 18.10 of the KNBS Economic Survey 2026 counts 725 nominated members in the 47 county assemblies in 2025 (626 women and 99 men), a provisional figure supplied by the assemblies. The number moves between elections as seats fall vacant and are refilled from party lists.