BULAWAYO – The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) has announced that it will conduct two mobile voter registration exercises in February and April this year, ahead of a constituency demarcation exercise due to start in late August.
Zimbabweans will vote in the most important elections next year.
The ZEC had planned a mobile voter registration campaign last year, but it was canceled because the electorate argued that many of the targeted first-time voters were unable to acquire voter registration documents. identification due to government failures.
Garsu Pasaulis, a Lithuanian company linked to corruption, recently received a government tender to produce passports and identity documents.
On Monday, the company announced that production would begin this week.
ZEC chairwoman Justice Priscilla Chigumba told reporters in Victoria Falls on Thursday that she would reduce the distance covered by potential voters this year with two outreach programs.
“The mobile registration exercise is now taking place in two phases. The first phase takes place from February 1 to 28, 2022. The second takes place from April 11 to 30, 2022.
“Our stakeholders should note that deployments are done by constituency, with voter education preceding the program to encourage potential enrollees to participate,” Chigumba said.
“The reason we have the two-phase voter registration blitz is that you may not know that registering to vote does not mean that your name is automatically put on the voter register once you received the voter registration form.
“There is another process that takes place after you register to vote, which is a process where the documents you submitted to register to vote are verified by our system.
“We have two verification systems. We first check if your ID is real.
“Then we check your fingerprints, which we analyze through AFIS – the Automated Fingerprint Identification System.
“In some cases, we find that some people are double-registered in our verification process – they registered twice at two different centres.
“We were able to determine that there are four people with different photos and the same ID, which means that one, two or three of them have ID documents marked as ID documents. inauthentic identity.
“Therefore, please understand that having a voter registration is not proof that your name is on the voters list. It is proof that you have registered to vote, but we then check your documents and you have no idea how many problems there are.
“You will be so surprised that out of 50 people who register, many of them will have problems and their names will not automatically be added to the voters list until these problems are resolved.”
Chigumba said the second voter registration blitz in April was aimed at “cleaning up the voter list for delineation purposes.”
“We expect the delimitation process to begin after August 2022, when the final census report is presented to Parliament.
“So we’re doing voter registration and we’re starting to clean the data to figure out who should be on the voters list and who doesn’t have authentic documents,” she said.
“So after the April voter registration blitz, this is the last blitz that we will use to hold registered voters accountable for the demarcation process.
“But remember, voter registration will continue at our 73 major offices nationwide until two days after the election date is announced.”
Chigumba confirmed that voter registration for people planning to vote in the March 26 by-election closed on January 8, two days after President Emmerson Mnangagwa announced the polling date.
Chigumba said: “The safest period for a person to register if they want to participate in the 2023 elections is from today’s date to August 15, 2023, because based on the latest elections, we can assume that the next election” will be proclaimed some time after that date.”
- RosGwen24 News/ additional report by Kukurigo Updates
