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Illegality proven beyond doubt
Justice for Agriculture (JAG) Zimbabwe
February 24, 2003

The publication on January 4 2003 of the preliminary results of Zimbabwe's 2002 census provides the final proof that the Zimbabwe Electoral Authority had to vigorously inflate the voters' roll to overwhelm the votes received by Robert Mugabe's main opponent, Morgan Tsvangirai.

According to the 2002 census, Zimbabwe's population was 11 634 663 in August 2002. On the basis of the most recent breakdown of the numbers within each age group, the maximum total number of people eligible to vote would have been 4 770 212. This is because 59 percent of Zimbabwe's population is below the age of 18.

But according to the Registrar-General, the voters' roll for the presidential election had 5,6 million names on it. The number of names on the roll for the 2000 parliamentary election was 5,2 million. This number was not challenged because estimates placed the population at about 13 million. However, just before the election and in breach of the Electoral Act, a supplementary voters' roll was created and Zanu PF registered another 400,000 voters in the rural areas. Opposition candidates were not permitted to examine or even see this roll.

This action brought the voters' roll to 5 612 272. This number can be shown to be statistically impossible, even if the population had been 13 million. Working with the known percentages in each age group, it can be proved that not less than 59 percent of Zimbabweans were under 18, and therefore not entitled to vote. And 41 percent of 13 million is 5,3 million.

According to the Registrar-General, the voters' roll for the presidential election had 5,6 million names on it. Now we discover from the census that Zimbabwe's population is only 11,6 million. Mugabe's claimed election victory rests on a clearly rigged voters' roll that now turns out to have been much bigger than the adult population.

Working from the other direction, the demographics show that to have 5,6 million voters on the voters' roll, Zimbabwe's population would have to be 17,5 million, about the same as Australia's.

What should the figures have been? With only 41 percent of the population of voting age, only 4,7 million people would be qualified to be on the roll, and the 80 percent who actually registered would have numbered 3,8 million people. By pushing the voters' roll up to 5,6 million, the ruling party gave itself the support of an extra 1,8 million ghost voters.

A voter turnout of between 40 and 50 percent would mean that genuine votes cast would have been between 1,5 million and 1,9 million, but Mugabe claims to have won 1 688 939 votes by himself, beating Morgan Tsvangirai, who received only 1 254 930 votes. Another four candidates polled just under 105 000 votes. The Registrar-General claimed at the time that 3 048 752 votes were cast.

On the assumption that all of Tsvangirai's 1,2 million votes were genuine, this arithmetic proves that more than a million of Mugabe's votes were not.

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