Presidential Petition: Raila’s Lawyers Say Ruto Did Not Attain 50 Percent Plus One Vote Threshold

The legal team representing Azimio presidential candidate Raila Odinga has urged the Supreme Court to nullify president-elect William Ruto’s victory in the August 9th presidential election.

Led by Senior Counsel James Orengo, the lawyers told the seven-judge bench that the final vote used to declare Ruto as the winner was manipulated.

“There was deceit, there was manipulation and all these was premeditated and made possible by the attack, if I may put it that way of the IT structure of the electoral commission,” Orengo submitted.

Orengo further noted that the final tally of votes used by the IEBC Chairperson to declare the winner of the election does not add up, adding the president-elect did not attain the 50 percent plus one vote threshold.

“The way that the commission was able to deal with the forms in uploading, transmission and others deleted from the system clearly showed that this election was rigged in favor of Ruto and we urge that you nullify the election because Ruto did not attain the 50+1 threshold,” he added.

“If you look at the results as announced by IEBC and compare them with what is stated in Form 34C, and if you compute the number of votes cast for each of the four candidates, they do not add up completely.”

He further told the court the election commission contradicted itself by first indicating that the total votes cast were 14,466,779 (65.4 percent turnout) before it later indicated in the final votes captured in Form 34C as 14,213,037.

“I invite the court to calculate the number of votes garnered by each candidate, the numbers do not agree at all. The computation of the figure 50 plus one was based on a wrong computation on the total votes cast as announced by the IEBC chairman,” said Orengo.

“We are going to demonstrate that the number of votes cast, keeps on shifting as set out on Form 34 C.”

Ruto was declared the winner of the closely contested race with 7.18 million votes (50.49 percent) followed by Odinga, who garnered 6.94 million (48.85 percent).