Kenya will be heading to the polls on Tuesday to choose leaders who will represent them for the next five years.
The election will see Kenya usher in new leadership after President Uhuru Kenyatta's 10-years rule.
In Tuesday's election, 22,120,458 voters will be expected to cast their votes, including 7,483 prisoners and 10,444 voters in the diaspora.
The voters will be choosing leaders across six elective seats; the president, governor, senator, member of National Assembly (MP), woman representative and ward representative (MCA).
This has been named a high stake election and also one of the most highly contested in the country.
Despite this, the issue of spoilt votes continues to be a thorny issue when deciding who has won an election.
In the 2017 presidential election, the IEBC announced that 403,503 votes were spoilt. Lack of civic education and lack of assistance by IEBC officials has been highly attributed to this.
According to Election Regulations, a spoilt ballot is not a vote at all and does not count towards turnout.
However, the Star will take you through steps on how not to spoil your vote;
- Once your biometrics have been confirmed, make sure the six ballot papers have an official IEBC stamp.
- When marking your ballot, make sure your mark corresponds to the name, portrait and symbol of the candidate.
- Do not mark boxes corresponding to two candidates on one ballot paper.
- Your mark should not touch outside the box of the candidate you are voting for.
However, if a voter spoils a ballot paper they may be given another ballot paper but this cannot be done more than twice.
