The Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) which has observed several elections worldwide said while the new system is touted as having the potential to prevent instances that have occurred in past elections when voters from others areas have been moved to other areas in a bid to bolster the fortunes of a particular party's candidate in that area, the proposed system was fraught with serious risks.
The observer group, made up of 38 non-governmental organizations, cited four reasons why the new system should be reexamined.
"The first risk is that such a system might make it more easy to use the tactic of pre-election displacement of voters from the areas where their specific polling station is located," ZESN said in a statement.
"If a person can only vote at a specified polling station, the easy way to ensure they do not vote is to displace them or otherwise prevent them from reaching that polling station. If displaced in advance of an election, it may be proposed that such voters should be able to use the facility of postal voting."
But then the facility of postal voting is restricted to persons who are outside the country on government business.
"ZESN recommends relaxation of postal voting rules, so that the facility is more widely available to persons who cannot for any reason be at the polling station on voting day. This will be come more important if the polling-station based voters' roll is used," the election watchdog said "The second risk is that a polling station-based voters' roll system increases opportunities for post-election retribution. In the past, voters have been targeted for punishment for voting for the wrong party or candidate by losing contestants."
ZESN said the risk is that with a more localised and specific polling-station based voters' roll, it will be even easier to identify voting patterns at small local levels.
"These negatives must be weighed against the positives of the polling
station- based voters' roll. What makes sense in theory might not be the right thing in practice," ZESN's statement said.
"The first question to be asked is: do the identified risks exist in the present system? They do, which is why there has been pre-election and post- election violence in the past. The second question may be:
do the risks increase under the polling station-based voters' roll? It seems that they do escalate given the localised character of the polling station-based voters' roll. But there is a third question, which is, would the opportunities 'bussing in' voters and double-voting be reduced under the polling-station based voters' roll?
The answer seems to be that those opportunities would be reduced," ZESN said.
Post published in: News