The Party List for Nominated Seats, and How a Name Gets On It
Some seats in Kenya are never voted for.
Voters elect six offices on six ballot papers: President, Governor, Senator, Woman Representative, Member of the National Assembly and Member of the County Assembly. Alongside those, the Constitution and the Elections Act provide for nominated members in the National Assembly, the Senate and the county assemblies, filled from party lists rather than from a count of votes for an individual.
The number of such seats in each chamber is set out in the Constitution and the Elections Act. Read them for the seat you care about rather than relying on a figure quoted at a meeting, because the categories differ between the National Assembly, the Senate and a county assembly.
What the lists are for
The nominated seats exist to correct for things a first-past-the-post contest does not produce on its own.
Gender balance is the largest of them. Others cover youth, persons with disabilities, ethnic and other minorities, and marginalised communities. Each chamber has its own combination, and each has its own rules about which categories a list must include.
Related: what a stricter gender rule would change.
How a name gets on a list
Through the party, under its own nomination rules, and then onto a document filed with the electoral commission.
The party's rules must set out how list positions are decided. Some parties run an internal process with applications and an interviewing panel. Some put it to a party organ. Some do it in a much smaller room than either of those, which is exactly why the rules and the disputes matter.
Whatever the internal method, the output is a list submitted to the commission by a statutory deadline, before the general election, in priority order.
The rules that constrain what a party may submit
A party list is not a free hand.
The names on it must be members of the party. The list must be in order of priority, and that order is not decoration, because seats are allocated down the list. It must alternate between male and female candidates. It must include the categories the law requires for that chamber, which is where persons with disabilities, youth and marginalised communities come in.
A list that fails these tests is defective, and a defective list gets sent back to the party at exactly the moment the party has no time to fix it.
How seats are actually allocated
Proportionally, which is the part aspirants most often misunderstand.
Allocation follows the party's performance at the election, so the number of nominated seats a party receives depends on the votes and seats it wins. Position one on the list of a party that wins almost nothing produces nothing. Position eight on the list of a party that performs strongly may produce a seat.
That makes two questions decisive, and they are not the ones people usually ask. How strong is this party in this county or nationally, and what position am I actually in?
Once submitted, the list is frozen
This is the rule with the sharpest edge.
After submission the list cannot simply be revised because the party has changed its mind or because a bargain has been struck. The law allows changes only in narrowly defined circumstances, and a party that reorders its list informally after the deadline creates a dispute it will lose.
The lists are published, which means you can check your own name and your own position rather than being told about them.
Related: where a list dispute is heard.
What an aspirant for a nominated seat should do
Treat it as a campaign, because it is one, just with a different electorate.
Get the party's rules for list nominations in writing and find out which organ decides and when it sits. Confirm you are on the party's membership register, because a non-member cannot be listed.
Related: how membership is recorded.
Build a documented case rather than a claim of loyalty. If you are seeking a seat reserved for a category, the evidence of your work with and for that constituency is the argument: organisations, projects, membership, references, a record that can be checked.
Then, when the list appears ahead of the 2027 vote, check three things on the actual document. That your name appears. That it is spelled as on your identity card. And that your position is the one you were promised.
If any of the three is wrong, the time to raise it is that week, not after the allocation.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are party lists used for in Kenya?
They fill the nominated seats in the National Assembly, the Senate and the county assemblies. Those seats exist to correct for outcomes a direct contest does not produce, covering gender balance, youth, persons with disabilities, and ethnic or marginalised communities. The seat numbers and categories are set out in the Constitution and the Elections Act.
How are nominated seats allocated between parties?
Proportionally, according to how the party performed at the election. That means your list position matters only in combination with your party's strength. Position one on the list of a party that wins almost nothing yields no seat, while a lower position on a strong party's list may yield one.
Can a party change its list after submitting it?
Not freely. Once the list is submitted to the electoral commission by the statutory deadline it is effectively frozen, with changes permitted only in the narrow circumstances the law allows. A party that informally reorders its list after the deadline is creating a dispute it is likely to lose, and the published lists make such changes visible.