Campaigners for the frontrunners, Deputy President William Ruto and veteran politician Raila Odinga, are circulating dozens of posts claiming that their opponent is engaged in "vote rigging plots", said Benedict Manzin, a sub-Saharan Africa analyst at UK-based intelligence firm Sibylline.
"We are increasingly seeing false information which seeks to delegitimise the results of the election with widespread claims that the opposing side would only win through fraud and that they are attempting to steal the election," Manzin told AFP Fact Check.
In one case, a strategist for Ruto's campaign accused Odinga's team of trying to rig Tuesday's poll because the 77-year-old urged the election commission to use a manual voter register instead of a digital one.
Meanwhile, a pro-Odinga blogger tweeted that Ruto was attempting to steal the election, sharing a link to an unrelated video – since taken down – of a politician discussing an old unrelated scandal.
Mary Blankenship, a disinformation researcher at the University of Nevada, said the circulation of baseless fraud claims could cause real harm, especially in a country where past polls have been followed by an eruption of violence.
"It creates an avenue for either of the candidates to discredit the...
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