MP's advice for women politicians: Dismantle rigging and protect your vote to succeed
National Assembly Minority Whip Millie Odhiambo.
What you need to know:
- Kenyan MP Millie Odhiambo shares candid insights on rigging, manipulation, and the gendered barriers that distort democracy.
- From delayed voting and night-time bribery to systemic exclusion, Millie reveals the obstacles women face in electoral politics and why she chose to 'dismantle the rigging and protect her vote'.
- Her book Rig or Be Rigged? offers lessons on how women can survive—and fight back—in a deeply flawed system.
“If you go into elections in Kenya thinking the process will be aboveboard, or fairly aboveboard, like I did, you are naïve, foolish or in denial, as our institutions are nascent and many people go out of their way to ensure they have stunted growth,” says Millie Odhiambo, who has been elected three times since 2013 as a Member of Parliament for Mbita before it changed to Suba North in 2016.
This electoral unfairness does not only affect women candidates but also women voters, further deepening the gender imbalance in elective representation and participation in the democratic process. While women make up 50.5 per cent of Kenya’s population, when it comes to politics, their influence is nullified by entrenched systemic, cultural, and socioeconomic obstacles.
Politically, they remain under-registered. In 2022, 15 million men belonged to 82 political parties compared to only 8.6 million women. Similarly, according to data from the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, women constituted 47 per cent of registered voters against 53 per cent men.
When it comes to exercising their right to vote, either as party members or registered voters, the rough game of political manipulation often locks them out. Millie highlights these realities in her book Rig Or Be Rigged?
Her friend, she narrates, told her that in Africa, and in Kenya in particular, it is unacceptable to allege a win and claim that results were rigged because rigging is a fact of political life. You have to make a choice to rig or be rigged out.
She did not agree with her friend at the time, as she believed in the integrity of the electoral process. But reality soon hit her hard, and that belief later became her first unwritten rule in elective politics. Yet, she wasn’t ready to accept and move on. She introduced her own anti-normal tactic: dismantle the rigging and protect your vote.
“This is the approach I took and, from what I've heard, experienced and witnessed, I agree that the first rule in Kenyan electoral politics is rig or be rigged out, and for a minority, dismantle the rigging and protect your vote. You have to choose one of the three options,” she says in the book. “I chose the last option because it's legal, though a lot more difficult to deal with. For most, especially men, it is much easier to just rig.”
It is difficult when the cornerstone of a woman candidate’s election is the support of women voters, while her opponent has mastered the art of rigging, a malpractice that is not only illegal under election laws but also denies women the right to vote in a democratic country and to be fairly elected.
“Your first order of business, as a serious player, is this: you must take steps to minimise or stop the rigging from taking place,” she advises. “But before you put in place anti-rigging mechanisms, you need to be aware of some rigging techniques corrupt players apply, which include pre-primaries rigging techniques, pre-election rigging techniques, election day rigging techniques, and post-voting rigging techniques.”
An inordinate delay in the start of voting to create room for manipulation is one such strategy, a wait that affects women and older persons who get tired and end up giving up voting altogether, she says. “Most women also fear staying out late for cultural and security reasons. This means if such a category forms your primary support base, you are in for trouble,” she says.
Then there is a form of voter bribery done the night before the vote, known as “the finish”, which she says “everyone kind of knows it and expects it.” Most of her committee members had included it in her campaign budget as an “acceptable” item, but she struck it out. And when they later faced myriad challenges, she was duly reminded that she removed “the finish” budget.
Women are often used as puppets in this night-time voter bribery. She cites one case in which they arrested a woman distributing maize meal to homes at night, but when they reported her to the police, the officer on duty dismissed them, saying it was a disturbance and that the bale of maize meal did not have the name of the opponent.
Women, she says, perform poorly in “the finish” game as most of them do not like to bribe and often lack the resources to do so, anyway. Then comes violence, which Millie says is one of the most common rigging techniques used against women. Millie focused on protecting her vote by training civilians to undertake policing, especially the night before election.
“They spent most of their time chasing those who were engaged in night-bribing,” she says. “I also had a rapid-response team that was equipped with vehicles and well-built women and men who could enforce arrests of those found bribing as the police were ‘overwhelmed’ and could not help.”
In the ongoing voter registration, turnout has been low, with only 20,754 new voters since the resumption of continuous voter registration on September 29, 2025. Nevertheless, the environment within which that vote will be exercised will determine whether women are left behind or carried along.
