Voters Roll Rigging

“That the Respondent [the Registrar-General] make available on or before 7 January 2001 [sic] to the Applicant [an] electronic copy on compact disk supplied by the Applicant and in a comma delimitated ASCII format of the common voters’ roll in respect of all registered voters in Zimbabwe up to 2 January, 2002”.

Bryant Elliot accompanied by Nomore Sibanda ( deceased MDC Election Director ) went to KG6 where the voters roll is kept on computers and it took the computer technician just 30 minutes to make a copy of the whole roll and to put the electronic data onto 5 ( five ) CD’s. At the time the roll consisted of 5,2 million registered voters. ( The RG’s staff were busy inputting new voters following the registration exercise ) By the time the Presidential Elections were held 6 weeks later the roll had risen to 5,8 million registered voters.
Just prior to the elections an application was made to have an updated electronic copy of the roll so that the additional 600 thousand voters could be identified. This request was refused and not only was an electronic copy denied the paper copy was also never handed over.
A long legal battle resumed in an attempt to gain access to public domain information which cumulated in the Supreme Court judgement on 1st October 2002 whereby a copy of the roll was denied by the Full Bench of the Supreme Court. The Hon. Justice G Friedman representing the General Council of the Bar of South Africa, the General Council of the Bar of England and Wales, the Society of Advocates of Namibia and the Australian Bar Association, all of which are members of the International Bar Association’s Forum for Barristers and Advocates,  was an independent observer in the matter ( His full report is available on request.)  In short the Supreme Court ruling made a mockery of Justice and what the voting public is entitled.
The legal route on the voters roll now quashed by the Supreme Court the right to examine the voting residue pertaining to the elections was requested. This was denied and the legal route had to be resorted too whereby after another long and protracted battle an order was obtained granting Morgan Tsvagirai the right to examine the said residue. I was appointed his agent and together with a team of 17 young men and women volunteers set about the mammoth task – It took us over two months to cover just 10% of the residue. This 10% sample was sufficient evidence to publish our findings in a report – Inspection and Analysis of the voting residue pertaining to the 2002 Presidential Elections ( copy available on request ) which unequivocally identify massive fraud, rigging and chronic voters roll irregularities. With the SADC initiated conciliatory talks between MDC and ZANU going on the parliamentarians led by the Hon. David Coultart MP and in the light of previous court rulings, managed to get considerable changes made to the deeply flawed Electoral Act. A significant amendment being
21 (1)  Every voters roll shall be a public document and open to inspection by the public, free of charge, during ordinary office hours at the office of the Commission or the constituency registrar where it is kept.

21 (3)  The Commission shall without delay provide any person who requests it with a copy of the voters roll, upon payment of the prescribed fee:

Provided that—

     (i)   the prescribed fee shall not exceed the reasonable cost of preparing the copy;               

21 (4)  Notwithstanding subsection (3), the Commission shall, upon payment of the prescribed fee, not later than seven days after the calling of the election concerned, provide to every political party and candidate contesting the election, and every accredited observer group, one electronic copy of every voters roll to be used in the election:

  the seven days after the calling having long expired it was only yesterday – 18th Feb – that the first “electronic” copy of the roll was made available – the electronic copy provided is no more than a JPEG image of each page of the printed roll and NOT a “comma delimitated ASC11 file that can be used electronically.
 
It is so very very sad because the regime has to stoop so low and be so devious and go to such extraordinary measures at the taxpayers expense to deny the ordinary people their constitutional right to public domain information.  – Topper Whitehead – FreeZim in Exile
19th February 2008
 
Notes
The ACT states very clearly that the voters roll must be in the control of the commission “ZEC” whereby in reality the Registrar General is still calling the shots.
The time, cost and effort of doing what they have is staggering when it would have been so easy to make a electronic copy of their “print file” as they did before.
What they are giving is worth significantly less than a paper copy.
The very fact that they have gone to such extraordinary measures to withhold information that should be public is clear evidence that they have no real intention of transparency, openness or fair play.
We got a copy of the whole country in electronic print file format in January 2002 and the whole country fitted on 5 ( Five ) CD’s
Each page of the “electronic” roll that the RG is supplying takes more than 500KB making the 100thousand page voters roll a 80million MegaByte file resulting in over 1000 CD’s
At the gazetted price of 100million per CD = 100trillion Zim $
If the RG made an electronic copy of the roll by copying the ASC11 print file it would take just 30 minutes and only 5 CD’s