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Electoral Reforms 2: Towards greater transparency
Youth Forum
November 21, 2012

With Zimbabwe's previous elections all marred with controversy, the electoral reforms that have been instituted have clauses that aim at achieving greater transparency in all forthcoming elections. The youths of Zimbabwe, speaking at a gathering organised by the Youth Empowerment and Transformation Trust (YETT), said they believed that these reforms, if fully implemented, can lead to a more transparent manner in conducting elections.

Disclosure of Ballot Paper Details

Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) is now required publicly to disclose and provide political parties and candidates with information about the total number of ballot papers printed for each election, where the ballot papers have been printed as well as how the ballot papers have been distributed to the different polling stations. This should make it easy for all actors to tally the numbers that will be officially released by ZEC with the figures they have.

Access to the Voters' Roll

The Voters' Roll is a public document - the public, including you can inspect the voters roll free of charge at ZEC or Constituency Registrar during normal working hours. This has always been the case before the reforms, and the Youth Forum would like to encourage the youths of Zimbabwe to utilize this opportunity to inspect if their names still appear on the roll, and if the captured details are correct.

From the current reforms, persons and organizations will be able obtain electronic or printed copies of the roll for a reasonable fee. We hope the Registrar General's offices will improve from their version of 'electronic' copies, where they previously provided the electronic copy in the form of an image, which would require specialized character recognition software to bring it into a format that is easy to analyze.

Whilst we understand the need to provide the roll in a form that is not easy to alter for security reasons, it is important for to look at other formats like Portable Document Format (PDF) that will make it easier for the document to be analyzed using various software.

After an election is called, political parties contesting the election and accredited observers will be entitled to a copy of the electronic roll or printed roll for a reasonable fee. The Youth Forum encourages the responsible authorities to have the 'reasonable fee' as only enough for the production costs of the roll and not be prohibitive for those who want a copy of the roll.

Also, each nominated candidate will be entitled to obtain an electronic copy of the constituency roll free of charge.

Presidential Election and Run-off

In a bid to avoid the embarrassment of the 2008 March Presidential election where the results were announced after more than 30 days of the election, ZEC is now mandated to announce Presidential election results within 5 days of final day of polling. However, the Electoral Court can, for good cause, extend that period on application from ZEC.

Proclamation specifying election date must now also specify the date for possible run-off poll. But a drafting error resulted in inconsistency, with one section saying the runoff should be held within 21-63 days of the initial election while another gives the period as 28-42. ZEC has since noted this, and we hope they will rectify this in time for the next election.

Polling Station Results to be Made Public

To foster transparency in terms of results, the new regulations now state that at each polling station the presiding officer must:

• post certified returns outside the station;
• provide each candidate or polling agent with copy of return; and
• forthwith provide every political party and candidate that contested an election with polling station return sent to the constituency center.

At the Constituency Centers, the constituency elections officer must:

• Post certified return of the collated results outside constituency center;
• Provide each candidate or polling agent with copy of that return; and
• Forthwith provide every political party and candidate that contested the election with a copy of every polling station return sent to the constituency center and the constituency return sent to the National Command Centre.

Reforms Must be Fully Implemented

These measures thus require at every stage of the processing of results open disclosure of the results, which makes it almost impossible for results to be altered at a later stage because every single result is known.

The Youths that gathered at the YET Trust offices, whilst applauding these reforms, reminded the authority that without full adherence and respect for these, the next elections can still be controversial, and all these reforms will only be meaningful if they are fully implemented.

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