Busia senator, Okiya Omtatah, on Monday, June 12, pushed for an amendment of the Constitution to devolve the presidency from the national to the county level.
In a statement, he noted that devolving the presidency to the 47 counties would emulate the United States electoral college system where the president is not elected directly by citizens but through electors from each state.
To put it into perspective, Omtatah explained that the president would be elected by a popular vote weighted at the county level and not nationally to break the ethnic barriers in the country. This in turn equates all counties and the decision would not be factored on a county's population.
"I strongly believe that we have a design flaw in our Constitution wherein we devolved all organs of governance except the presidency.
"Hence, for me, the solution lies in amending Article 138 of the Constitution to devolve the presidency by removing the provision inadvertently created in law for the ethnic mobilisation of the national electorate at presidential elections," he stated.
Article 138 of the Constitution states that: A candidate shall be declared elected as President if the candidate receives more than half of all the votes cast in the election and at least twenty-five per cent of the votes cast in each of more than half of the counties.
How the System Works
Each county would be assigned the number of electoral points equivalent to the number of constituencies it has plus one extra point underscoring that all counties are equal. This results in 337 electoral points resulting from 290 constituencies and 47 counties.
One would be required to win the popular vote in the number of counties required to garner at least 169 electoral points (being more than half (or 50 per cent + 1) of the points).
According to Omtatah, the new system would eliminate the tribal discussions associated with elections.
"When tallied at the county level, even Lamu County with only two constituencies would have three vital electoral points which, though not enough to produce a president, can prevent one from being a president. Hence, Lamu will not be insignificant in the scheme of things and those seeking the presidency will not flaunt the national sizes of their tribes at Lamu, they will instead focus on selling their agenda to the county.
"With that, the seeds for issue-based national politics would have been planted and even an El Molo with the right ideas will have a realistic opportunity to be elected the President of Kenya," Omtatah opined.
