Voters’ roll to be overhauled

By Tatenda Dewa | Harare Bureau |

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) on Monday told representatives of political parties falling under the National Electoral Reform Agenda (NERA) that it was working to replace the current voters’ roll with a completely new biometric register that would record the faces and fingerprints of polling citizens.

The existing register has for years been rapped for containing anomalies that include ghost voters, inaccuracies in identity particulars, duplication of names and omissions that the opposition said were aiding the ruling Zanu PF in stealing elections.

ZEC chairperson, Rita Makarau told the political parties at the commission’s offices in Harare that the new registration of voters was likely to commence in May 2017 and the biometric roll would be polling station-based.

“We are going to come up with a new voters’ roll for 2018…The voters’ roll that we are going to use in 2018 will not make any reference to what happened in 2013.

“Tell all your members that once ZEC calls for voter registration, we have got to turn up all three million members of our parties. All of them have to turn up for voter registration otherwise they will not be able to vote for our next president, or for you as an MP, or for you as a councillor,” said Makarau.

She admitted that the existing roll had loopholes.

“The reason why is because the old voters’ roll did not capture our biometrics. This new voters’ roll captures our biometrics and is going to be very different to the old voters’ roll.

“If you registered for 2013, but don’t register for 2018, your picture will not be able to appear on the voters’ roll, and your name will actually not be on the voters’ roll, which is going to be polling station specific,” she said.

She added that they hoped to procure new equipment to aid with registration by April 2017, after which registration would begin and stretch to the end of the year.

In the past, though, ZEC plans have been derailed by poor funding as the opposition and electoral experts accused the government of sabotaging the commission.

Preliminary work towards polling station mapping had already commenced, said Makarau.

“ZEC has commenced the polling station specific voter registration mapping exercise. That exercise is actually unfolding as we speak, and we hope to complete it by 30 November. People are out in your areas mapping polling areas.

“Briefly, we have polling stations that have already been established for past elections. We are saying people are going to be registered to a particular polling station. Your name will only appear at one polling station as a voter, and you must know that polling station. Mapping is mini-demarcation of wards,” she said.

Existing ward and constituency boundaries will not change, though.

Biometric voting is being increasingly adopted worldwide so as to enhance polling transparency, accuracy and security.Nehanda Radio