There is mounting concern that there will be delays and serious errors unless urgent corrective measures are not taken with regard to ballot boxes, polling officers, polling agents, polling stations, voter education and the voters’ roll.The law says that each polling station should have at least three voting compartments, each containing at least one ballot box, allocated for the use of voters whose surnames begin with the letters A to L, M, and N to Z.But, with just 27 days to go, it is still unclear if there will, in fact, be three booths for each set of the four-tier election, the council, parliamentary, senate and presidential -a total of 12 polling booths. This means each candidate would need to have four election agents, three inside and one outside. Government says two agents per candidate would suffice. How can one person deal with 12 copies of the voters’ roll, 12 polling booths, four queues of voters and counting of ballots from 12 booths at the same time? asked political commentator Ronald Shumba. There should have been adequate arrangements for this new electoral dispensation. Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) spokesperson Shupikai Machereni this week claimed: The country is readily prepared for the elections. She could not, however, give the exact number of polling stations, saying they had not yet conclusively established this, although reports indicate there would be at least 11,000 stations countrywide.MDC Glen Norah candidate Priscillah Misihairabwi-Mushonga, who is also Deputy Secretary-General of the Mutambara-led MDC, said: The ZEC has no capacity and what is happening is that the same old bodies are running the election. The old national logistics committee, which has failed us in the past, is still in charge.Most candidates this week complained they had still not received the final copy of the voters’ roll from their constituency registrars. There was also no supplementary voters’ roll, allegedly used in the past for vote-rigging. Voting is transparent after all?
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