Speaking at a TweeT@ble event organised by the Dutch Embassy in Harare recently, Chamisa said: “We said to ZEC, we were willing to help them to go digital and have a biometric voters’ roll, but they seem to have a phobia of technology. There was resistance to our efforts”.
A biometric system would identify voters using their biological marks such as fingerprints and facial characteristics.
Most elections in Zimbabwe and Africa have been marred by allegations of rigging and manipulation, and use of non-existent or deceased persons in the voting process.
Several African countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burkina Faso, Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi, and Kenya have adopted biometric technology to sanitise their voting processes.
Apart from reducing the possibility of election rigging, biometric technology has been found to be cost effective, and could have come in handy as the government struggles to raise adequate funds for polls.
“ICTs cut on time, costs, distance, and labour. All the problems they (ZEC) are complaining about could have been solved had they embraced ICTs,” said Chamisa.
Chamisa added that the administration of elections was likely to prove difficult and arouse serious contestations as ZEC continues to use the antiquated manual election management systems.
The statements by Chamisa come as the Institute for a Democratic Alternative for Zimbabwe has, without the authority of ZEC, established a website where registered voters can check their names online by just entering an identity number.
ZEC chairperson, Rita Makarau, said the commission was carrying out investigations to establish who was behind it.
Chamisa said ZEC’s failure to embrace ICTs was likely to affect its close guard on the electoral processes.
“This time it is going to be difficult for them to contain the situation because anyone, even someone in Binga can post on Facebook the results of a polling station before the commission makes the official announcement, so they (ZEC) should have been ahead of it before and established digital platforms of information dissemination.”
The electoral act still gives ZEC the sole mandate to announce poll results.
Makarau could not be reached for comment.
Post published in: News
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