Political parties locked in dispute over voters roll

The parties have in principal agreed to a new voters roll, in anticipation of a fresh poll, but disputes have emerged over how the new register will be compiled.

A highly placed source in government told us the MDC-T are demanding a biometric (electronic) voters roll. The MDC-T is also pushing for a ward based voters rolls, while ZANU PF is advocating for polling station-specific rolls.

The danger with using a polling station register is that it makes it easy for perpetrators of violence to identify and target perceived political opponents, our source said.

The chairman of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC), Justice Simpson Mtambanengwe, said the electoral body has started the process of cleaning up the voters roll and it would take three months.

ZEC said they had started working with the Registrar Generals office to ensure that the voters roll is in order, in time for the referendum.

A report published last month by the Zimbabwe Electoral Support Network (ZESN), a pro-democracy non-governmental organization, showed that 27 percent of the names listed on the current voters roll are of dead people.

ZESN has also called for a new register of voters to be prepared before any elections can take place, after its inspection of the roll revealed that 2,344 people registered were aged between 101 and 110 years old, while nine others were born between 1890 and 1900.

As part of electoral reforms called for in the Global Political Agreement, Cabinet has discussed the issue of the voters roll. But following disputes over its format, it was decided party negotiators were best suited to deal with it, according to our source. But he went on to say it was not yet clear how ZEC were going to clean up the voters roll, when the issue was still in dispute.

What is in dispute is the methodology to be used in coming up with a new voters roll. So if the ZEC chairman is saying they are cleaning it up, perhaps theyre starting afresh. Mutambanengwes language is not clear but I think by next week everything should be clearer, our source added.

Views across the board have backed the MDC-Ts call for a biometric roll. Biometric voter registration has software that captures citizens data, including fingerprints and a digital photograph, directly in the field. The biometric system is also known for doing away with multiple registrations and voting, because it can easily detect duplicates.