Mugabe’s largest voter base, the graveyard

By Robb WJ Ellis, The Bearded Man

I have often questioned just why Mugabe had his minions spirit away the ballot boxes of the first Presidential election in 2008. Perhaps this article provides some sort of answer to that question.

“Nearly a third of Zimbabwean registered voters on the voters’ roll that was used in the 2008 elections were dead, an observation report that was released in Harare today by the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) says.

ZESN, a civic organisation that seeks to promote democratic elections in Zimbabwe, in 2010 embarked on a Voters’ Roll Audit (VRA) to assess the quality of the voters’ roll.

In its report, it noted that the list-to-people test showed that 27 percent of the voters in the voters’ roll were deceased, a figure which translate to a third of the registered voters.

“The computer test revealed that 2,344 people born between 1901 and 1909, therefore aged between 101 and 110 years were on the voters’ roll. Nine people born between 1890 and 1900, aged between 111 and 120 years are registered voters,” the report says.

The ZESN report notes that 41 percent of the registered voters are no longer residing at the addresses in the voters’ roll.”

ZANU PF maintain that it is the MDC that is squewing the facts on the ground, and at one stage they were looking at charging Tendai Biti with treason because he released the results as per the information on the ground, before ZANU PF had had a chance to re-engineer the ballot.

ZANU PF, the authority behind the voters’ roll until the party was unseated in March 2008 (even if ZANU PF still remains in power), are the guilty party when it comes to the irregularities in the voters’ roll.

“In related evidence, Masvingo Urban MP, Tongai Matutu, shocked Parliament when he produced evidence that the voters’ roll used in the 2008 national elections had names of hundreds of dead people and infants who had been registered to vote,” the report says.

A total of 503 dead people appeared in the voters’ roll. Startlingly, all the 503 dead people had a similar date of birth – 1 January 1901. The same voters’ roll had 144,202 people aged 90 years and above and 115 voters below the age of 18 years – the legal voting age. The youngest was just a year old.”

I know that Zimbabweans are attributed with once having of the highest education standards in Southern Africa, but a one-year-old voting is pushing their luck just a little bit…

Here, in the UK, ballot papers are numbered. This is not so that there is a paper trail back to the voters as to who they voted for, but is does help when investigating any claim of unfair voting.

If the same was applied to Zimbabwe – and I don’t know if it does as I never voted in Zimbabwe when I lived there – then it would be very easy to remove the offending ballots from the count, leaving just an honest vote…

And honesty is something which the Mugabe party is very short of.

Robb WJ Ellis, The Bearded Man.

Read more: http://mandebvhu.instablogs.com/entry/mugabes-largest-voter-base-the-graveyard/#ixzz1BfmWcnQN