Court rejects bid to include 'none of the above' as option on ballots
The High Court in Nakuru has dismissed a petition from a voter seeking to compel the electoral agency to include the option of ‘none of the above' on ballot papers in the August 9 General Election.
Justice Hillary Chemitei said in his ruling on Thursday that the claims in Mr Boniface Mwai’s petition were not founded on the Constitution.
The judge said the matter should be addressed by Parliament, which deals with changes to the law.
He advised the voter to ask lawmakers to change the law and include the options he was seeking.
“I disallowed the petition because I did not find it meritorious in terms of its claims, which are not founded in our Constitution. Parliament should be the one dealing with the issues to do with change in laws,” Justice Chemitei ruled.
Mr Mwai, who filed the case in November last year, had argued that adding “none of the above” (NOTA) would give voters more options.
He said it would allow voters who have no faith in any of the candidates to exercise their democratic right by registering that none of them was worthy of their votes.
The NOTA option, he said, was the only way to formally withhold consent in an election rather than counting an unmarked ballot as a spoilt vote as has been the practice.
Mr Mwai had listed the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) as the respondent in the case.
But the IEBC, through lawyer Kipkoech Ngetich, opposed the petition, saying the option would violate the Constitution.
In an affidavit from CEO Marjan Hussein Marjan, the IEBC claimed the law does not allow the NOTA option as a mode of voting.
Mr Marjan argued that the Constitution does not contemplate a situation where one goes to a polling station to abstain from voting, noting that an eligible voter has the option of not voting for any of the candidates.
He said there are no formal procedures in place that would address situations where NOTA receives a plurality of votes, and so winning the elections renders the option meaningless.
Mr Ngetich welcomed the ruling, which he called a win for the Constitution.
He had argued that a NOTA option would have no legal consequence and that there would be no motivation for a voter to go to the polling booth and reject all the candidates. BY DAILY NATION
Post a Comment