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2013 Vision - Seeing double and the dead: A preliminary audit on Zimbabwe's voters' roll
Derek Matyszak, Research and Advocacy Unit Zimbabwe
October 12, 2009

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Introduction

The registration of voters and the compilation and maintenance of an accurate national voters' roll has been recognized as an essential and key part of the electoral cycle. Since the voters' rolls record who may or may not vote, they may ultimately have a determining effect on who wins the poll. Equally importantly, it is imperative that the voters' rolls, being the cornerstone of the administration of a democratic election, be accurate and up to date. While an incomplete voters' roll may disenfranchise those who might otherwise be entitled to vote, an inflated roll containing duplicate entries, names of persons who have emigrated or of dead voters, lends itself to electoral fraud. For if the roll is inflated a false and increased ballot count can be effected (through ballot box stuffing, multiple voting or manipulation of the figures on returns) without appearing blatantly implausible against the number of registered voters. Inaccurate voters' rolls have a knock-on effect on the delimitation of constituencies, portraying an inaccurate number of voters for each area. In a first-past-the-post system, such as that adopted by Zimbabwe for all elections other than the presidential, this assumes increased importance as the number of "wasted votes" may be increased due to wrongfully delimited areas based on a false presentation of the number of voters in a particular area. In the same way, an inflated roll acts as the justification for printing an excessive number of ballot papers, further opening possibilities for electoral fraud.

Background

The question of the (in)accuracy of the voters' rolls is a contentious issue and has been raised as a basis for the allegation that successive elections in Zimbabwe do not meet the requirement of being "fair" in accordance with internationally accepted democratic standards. All elections from 1985 onwards have been conducted under the auspices of successive electoral supervisory bodies and the same Registrar-General perceived by some observers and opposition candidates to be extremely partisan. As a result the voters' rolls, under the control of these bodies, have also been perceived as being deliberately inaccurate and inflated to facilitate manipulation of the vote count. Such criticism has appeared in reports on elections published by NGOs and independent observer groups. This suspicion and taint to the claim of a democratic mandate by the winners of the elections could have been, and can be, easily dispelled by an independent audit of the criticized voters' rolls and their subsequent rectification - an exercise made that much easier with the advent of powerful and easily accessible computer technology. It is one which should be welcomed by electoral management bodies and the Registrar-General in the interests of transparency and to support any claim of a fair election.

In fact, the contrary has been the case. The Registrar-General has repeatedly hindered people trying to inspect the voters' rolls. This obstructionist attitude has been abetted by supine Electoral Commissions which have done nothing to curb the Registrar-General's behaviour and by successive changes to the Electoral Act designed to reverse the small victories in the courts which facilitated access. It is instructive to track these changes to the legislation as they form a record of deliberately opaque governance and a persistent governmental stance that the voters' rolls should not be subjected to scrutiny by the public.

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