Okiya Omtatah: 140,028 Votes Were Left Out Hence Nobody Met 50+1 Threshold

Activist Okiya Omtatah, one of the Kenyans who have filed a case in the Supreme Court against William Ruto’s victory in the August 9 general election, claims that there are votes that were not counted.

Omtatah, who is the senator-elect of Busia county, claims that no presidential candidate met the 50+1% threshold required by law.

“From the workings, it is clear that no candidate garnered 50 percent plus one vote as required by Article 138(4)(a) of the Constitution. Hence, there was no basis for the IEBC Chairman, as the returning officer, to declare any candidate as duly elected President of the Republic of Kenya as stated in Form 34C,” the petition reads.

In his case, Mr. Chebukati had no basis to declare Dr. Ruto the winner of the presidential election.

Mr. Omtatah says that his analysis of the presidential vote showed that the IEBC did not tally the votes of people identified using the printed register after electronic voter identification devices failed in some areas.

He claims Mr. Chebukati left out about 140,028 votes.

‘From verified KIEMS kits, the minimum number of votes cast was at least 14,466,779. This number could only increase by the number of people who voted manually; it could not decrease by any amount,” the petition reads.

“This means that, because the Chairman did not factor in those who voted manually, there are at least 140,028 untallied votes (being 14,466,779 minimum cast votes minus 14,326,751 declared votes cast).”

Mr. Omtatah says that the votes left out were more than enough to deprive the winner of more than 50 percent of all valid votes cast.

“The presidential election should not be flawed, every vote should be counted,” says Mr. Omtatah in his case.

According to the activist, the commissioners differed after some of them failed to convince Mr. Chebukati to allow them to tally and confirm the results.